by S. W. Perry
Moving closer, Nicholas notices a stout lintel set into the brickwork. Below it is a black break in the wall – the entrance to a culvert.
The lintel is just about head-height, and when he peers in, Nicholas sees walls some six feet high, made of the same slippery, moss-covered stone as the riverside boundary itself. The floor is littered with pebbles that pierce the puddles of watery slime like tiny islands.
At the far end of the culvert a flight of stone steps leads upwards to ground level. And at its foot, lying like a bier in some ancient sepulchre, is a small wooden skiff, tethered by a loose rope to a ring set into the brickwork. Inside are two oars. There’s an iron socket set in the prow, presumably to carry a lantern.
With the tide out, the stink of river mud is overpowering. Is this how Ralph Cullen, Jacob Monkton and the others were consigned to the water? Nicholas wonders. He imagines the river at night, a single lonely light burning out on the current, the soft splash of a gutted body rolled into the dark water.
‘Perhaps it belongs to a fisherman,’ suggests Bianca at his shoulder.
‘I thought you said people avoid this place?’
‘Perhaps your monks forgot it when they left.’
‘In which case it would have rotted almost away by now,’ says Nicholas, edging past the little boat towards the steps.
‘Do we have to go in there now?’ asks Bianca, wrinkling her nose at the pungent stink of river ooze.
‘I thought you were intent on coming with me. Losing your nerve, Mistress Merton?’
She mutters something in Italian – an insult, by the way it’s delivered. He hears it even above the noise of the gulls. But he’s already climbing the steps.
Nicholas is standing on a trodden path amid a wilderness of dead and dying vegetation. Some thirty paces off to his right is the wall that adjoins Bianca’s physic garden. To his left – about the same distance away – he can make out the sagging roof of the Magdalene almshouse above the opposite wall. And ahead of him, rising like a grim stone bastion into the winter sky, is the river-facing side of the Lazar House itself. Only now can he truly appreciate the size of the place. The towering grey rag-stone is as solidly buttressed as a cathedral. A row of tiny windows pierces the wall high up below the eaves. Most are either empty or boarded up. What glass remains is grey and opaque, like the eyes of an old blind dog. In places the roof has fallen in, leaving gaping black wounds that let in the rain and the snow.
Steadying his nerves, he glances back to see that Bianca is close behind him, her face twisted in displeasure. As he begins to wade through the rotting ferns and stems of dogwood he imagines melancholy eyes watching him from the windows. He thinks he can hear the murmuring of long-dead monks praying for the desperate souls in their care, but it is only the sighing of the wind through the bare branches of an old hornbeam tree.
Reaching the louring face of the old hospital, he sees an ancient door, the timber faded to the colour of dust. One hand placed against the timbers tells him that although it may be ancient, it’s as stout as the day it was hung. But when he inspects the lock, he discovers it’s almost new. There’s just a thin colouring of rust on the iron. And, judging by the bright edge to the barrel, it’s been used recently.
And your diagnosis, Mr Shelby? says a voice in his head, sounding uncomfortably like Sir Fulke Vaesy’s.
This is the door the killer uses. He’s waiting behind it now. And though I told Bianca leprosy is a sickness, not a sin, now I’m not so sure. His skin is black like a toad’s, his eyes ablaze with hatred for everything that is clean. And when I step across the threshold, he will cut out my organs and toss my carcass into the Thames.
‘Nicholas, I’m really cold now,’ says Bianca in his right ear. ‘Have you seen enough? The door’s locked. Can we leave?’
‘We could get an iron crow from the Jackdaw: prize it open.’
Bianca’s olive skin has taken on the same wintery grey as the sky. ‘I suppose we might,’ she says, drawing her cloak closer around her shoulders. ‘But then we’ll announce to everyone that we’ve been here – including, if you’re right, the killer.’
‘Does that matter?’
‘He’s not likely to drop by the Jackdaw and ask you to repair the door frame, is he? If he knows he’s discovered, he’ll put as much distance between himself and this place as he can. And, on that particular count, I wouldn’t blame him.’
‘I suppose you’re right,’ says Nicholas despondently. Looking around for another way in, all he can see is the great hornbeam tree rising to the Lazar House roof. He’s never had a head for heights. He’s not even sure the higher branches would bear his weight. Reluctantly, he steps back from the door.
A wooden skiff and a new lock. It’s not a winning hand, and Nicholas knows it. Who’s to say how long the skiff has been lying in the culvert? It could be a year or more. And the lock could have been put there by the parish, or by a vagabond to safeguard the profit of his felonies. The Lazar House might be hiding nothing more life-threatening than a house-diver’s haul of stolen pewter.
But something tells him he’s wrong to dismiss it so quickly. Perhaps it’s just his sensitivity to its ancient, tortured atmosphere, but he can easily imagine the killer’s next victim lying chained in the darkness somewhere beyond this locked door. He tries to put himself inside the killer’s mind; asks himself what kind of place he would choose for a secret prison. Instantly, the Lazar House slips into place within the puzzle.
‘There’s no point in freezing to death out here in front of a locked door, Nicholas,’ Bianca says, interrupting his thoughts. She claps herself vigorously for warmth. ‘We need to think this through – form a plan.’ Nodding in the direction of the river, she adds, ‘And we need to go before the tide turns and traps us on the wrong side of that wall.’
He knows she’s right. The answer to his questions will have to wait awhile. Reluctantly, he turns and follows Bianca back towards the culvert.
The door opens so quickly that Elise barely has time to rise from the mattress before two men – she recognizes them as the Devil’s minions she’d fought so tenaciously yesterday – tower over her.
She has spent the long hours since waking wondering when they might return, when they will show their true nature. But to her surprise, they appear to be bearing nothing more satanic than a trencher of bread and cheese. Behind them comes the tall, mournful-looking man with the spade-cut beard who, by his demeanour and the way the men defer to him, is clearly their master. He seems to Elise an unlikely disciple of Lucifer.
‘God give you a good day, Mistress No-name,’ he says with a surprisingly warm smile for one whose face looks so full of sorrow. ‘Yesterday we feared we’d cornered a tigress. I trust we find you in a better humour this morning. Is it safe to lay this trencher down beside you? I’d prefer to keep my eyes in their sockets, if it’s all the same to you.’
Elise recalls the battle proudly, as though she’d been the victor and not the vanquished. She had clawed and flailed and bitten. She had kicked out like a terrified foal until her legs felt as heavy as lead. Struck home, too – more than once – if the resulting cries and curses had been anything to go by. But the months of living like a feral creature had sapped her strength, robbed her of the capacity to resist for long. And as she had felt her strength fading, she had decided her only hope was to surrender herself so that these minions of the Devil might not think to search the hedge from which they had dragged her, and where – in her fevered mind – little Ralph and moon-faced Jacob and the others are sheltering still, wondering where she’s gone.
‘Come now, child,’ says the mournful man with the beard, ‘what shall we call you, if you won’t tell us your name?’
But Elise knows how easy it is for the Devil to disguise himself. So she answers the question with the only weapon left to her: silence.
26
John Lumley does not know what to make of the bedraggled, half-starved young maid his servants have dragged from
the hedge at Cheam church. His compassion, however, will not allow him to throw her back into whatever mire of misfortune he’s plucked her from.
But what to do with her?
Clearly the girl is one of the vagrant poor. Should he hand her over to the parish authorities? He knows what they will do with her.
But a maid is not to be kept like a lost dog you might throw in with your hounds and forget about. If she won’t say a single word about who she is, or where she’s come from, what is a man to do?
Fulke Vaesy, on the other hand, has no doubts whatsoever about the maid’s continuing silence.
‘Devilry! That is the sole reason for her silence. The Devil is hanging on tight to her tongue. You should turn her over to the Church at the first opportunity. If you need a second opinion, ask your secretary, Master Quigley. He’ll agree with me, mark my words.’
‘Gabriel is in London on business of mine. But I think you’d find him as interested in the mute as I am,’ says Lumley as the wind buffets the windows of the privy chamber, swirling the snowflakes around the statue of the leaping horse in the inner courtyard. The servants have set a fire in the hearth, a talisman to ward off the worsening weather. ‘What do you make of her, Francis?’ Lumley ask of his clerk, Francis Deniker.
‘Sir Fulke may be right, my lord. A young maid of her age is highly susceptible to demonic possession,’ says Deniker uncomfortably. ‘I confess that in such cases I would have expected bodily spasms and utterings of the wildest sort, rather than silence. But if demons have stolen her powers of speech, then an exorcism may be in order.’
‘Exorcism is mere papist trickery,’ says Vaesy indignantly. ‘A good Protestant scourging will suffice to free the child.’ He studies his fingernails for a moment. ‘Of course there may be a simpler reason a cat has got her tongue.’
‘Which is?’ Lumley asks his friend.
‘Guilt – plain and simple. The child is a vagrant. I’d warrant she was skulking around the church to see what she could steal.’
‘Fulke, she’s a half-starved child!’
‘The canting sort teach their brats to steal almost before they’re out of swaddling wraps!’ Vaesy says in a tone that suggests he’s a man of the world and understands such things. ‘The parents feed them on scraps to keep them lean. The smaller they are, the easier they slip through your window.’
Lizzy Lumley, who has been sitting quietly by the fire with needle and silk, looks up from her work. ‘Come now, Sir Fulke, if those of us who are blessed with God’s good fortune turn our backs on those who have nothing, His love will not abide long in our hearts. Is that not what the Bible says?’
Lumley’s eyebrows narrow in triumph. ‘Lizzy is right. Where is your sense of charity, Fulke?’
‘Locked up safe, where brats like that can’t steal it from me.’
‘“He that hath mercy on a poor man honours his Maker” – Proverbs fourteen,’ quotes Deniker.
But Vaesy can match anyone in a biblical tennis match. ‘“And if thy right hand offends, cut it away. It serves thee better that one of thy limbs perish than all thy body go into hell” – Mathew, chapter five.’ He favours Lumley with a self-satisfied smile. ‘Give her to the parish, my lord. They’ll know what to do with a vagabond.’
‘Oh, they will, Fulke. They’ll flog her, perhaps even brand her on the hand or face. Then they’ll throw her back into the wilderness,’ says Lumley. ‘She’ll starve before spring.’
‘It looks as though someone has already branded her about the face,’ says Lizzy sadly. ‘Poor child.’
‘There we are, then,’ says Vaesy. ‘Surely you don’t intend to keep her?’
‘Master Sprint can always use another pair of hands in the kitchens,’ says John Lumley.
‘There will be thievery in her blood, mark my words,’ Vaesy warns.
‘Mercy now, Sir Fulke,’ says Lizzy, laying down her needlework, ‘surely you don’t begrudge the poor child a little shelter, at least until the weather improves. Have we forgotten the message of Christmas so quickly?’
Vaesy sighs and raises his hands in defeat. ‘I concede the field. Don’t say I didn’t attempt to warn you.’
John Lumley pours his friend a peace offering and hands him the glass. ‘There is nothing to warn us against, Fulke. The child has been sent to me by God, as a test.’
‘A test?’ says Vaesy doubtfully as he sips the Rhenish. ‘What kind of test?’
‘To discover whether a little of His love still abides in my heart. I said so last night, at prayers. Didn’t I, Lizzy?’
‘You did, Husband,’ says Lizzy, though neither man can tell by her voice what she thinks of her husband’s revelation.
‘Yesterday was the nineteenth day of January – St Wulfstan’s Day. The child came to us at Cheam church, of all places. A most providential conjunction, wouldn’t you say?’
Only the mention of Cheam church saves Fulke Vaesy from the unforgivable blunder of enquiring what St Wulfstan’s Day has to do with anything. ‘Ah, of course!’ he says expansively, ‘the anniversary of little Mary’s death. My mind was quite elsewhere. I’m sorry—’
‘So you will understand why I cannot possibly abandon a lost soul who came to me on that very day, and at the very place where her mortal remains now repose in God’s blessed rest.’
Vaesy tilts his great head slightly and savours the wine as it flows into the back of this throat. He swallows noisily and says with a breathtaking lack of tact, ‘Well, I only hope Master Deniker here is up-to-date with his inventory. You may need to consult it soon – to see what’s missing.’
As Nicholas and Bianca approach the Jackdaw on their return from the Lazar House they see a small crowd has gathered outside. Profitable trade, Bianca thinks, happily noticing no similar gathering outside the Turk’s Head. A few more shillings she can put aside for the day the pestilence returns and the Privy Council shuts the taverns and the playhouses.
And then she notices the two watchmen holding back their hounds on chain leashes. Nicholas casts her an uneasy glance.
The tavern door gapes open, almost off its hinges. And blocking the entrance – or perhaps to prevent escape – stand two men in crested militia helmets and steel breastplates, swords at their belts. Inside, another six are turning over the tavern from attic to cellar. One even carries a wheel-lock musket, as if the Jackdaw and its customers were a greater threat to England’s safety than King Philip and all his Spaniards. They have descended upon the tavern with the brutal surprise they always employ when flushing Jesuit priests out of hiding, or traitors plotting in cellars. Inside, Rose is wailing like Mary at the foot of the Cross.
The man who appears to be conducting this unholy assault emerges, wearing a face like an unwritten page. Bianca knows the type at once: an official nobody prepared to do harm because someone much higher up has given him a commission; a man wielding someone else’s power and consequently over-generous with it. Behind him comes a man-at-arms bearing Bianca’s travelling chest like a trophy won in battle. Nicholas senses Bianca stiffen as she watches the officer hold aloft a warrant from which hangs a heavy wax seal. He addresses the crowd in a voice laden with arrogance.
‘The herein named Mistress Merton is taken up by order of our sovereign majesty’s Privy Council, for diverse infringements and omissions. She is arraigned for the crimes of heresy and witchcraft. Also sought is her accomplice, one Nicholas Shelby of the county of Suffolk, a former physician, currently present in this parish. God save the Queen!’
Someone cries out, ‘Shame! Let the Privy Council find their own apothecary!’ But even as the assenting murmurs swell, another voice calls out: ‘There! There they are! There’s the witch. And there’s the one who calls himself a physician.’
For Bianca, a terrible recollection of Padua and the Holy Office of the Faith arriving to arrest her father; for Nicholas, a blinding flash of comprehension. He looks around for a glimpse of the watchers – the two men Bianca laughingly styled Leicester and Walsi
ngham – but their work is done and they are nowhere to be seen. Instead Nicholas’s searching eyes fall upon a florid, vengeful face laughing triumphantly in the crowd. The face of the man who has just denounced them. The face of the spurned bookseller Isaac Bredwell.
27
The cold air makes pale phantoms of their breath as John Lumley and Fulke Vaesy cross the courtyard towards the Nonsuch kitchens. Above them an owl hunts, gliding silently over the roof-tiles.
‘I thought the kitchens were the best place to put her,’ Lumley explains. ‘You can’t keep up the pretence of silence for long in a kitchen – if, indeed, that is what it is.’
‘Pretence, I assure you, John. And I shall delight in proving it,’ counters Vaesy.
As they reach the open door a scullion darts out. She’s carrying a haunch of meat over one shoulder, yet still contrives a passable curtsey. At Nonsuch the servants are adept. When the queen and her court are here and two hundred mouths need feeding, they display the fleetness of swifts on the wing at sunset. ‘Have you come to see Betony, sir?’ the girl asks.
‘Betony?’ echoes John Lumley, raising a quizzical brow.
‘Seeing as how she won’t tell us her name, sir, we’ve decided to call her Betony.’
It takes Lumley a moment to catch on. ‘Betony – Lizzy planted it in the kitchen yard one spring,’ he explains to Vaesy. ‘It’s run rampant ever since.’
He leads Vaesy into a plaster-walled cavern the size of a stableblock, lit by the glow from one of four huge fireplaces and a score of tallow candles set in heavy iron sconces. Before each hearth is a spit-iron for turning whole beasts. There are broad benches for preparing food, towering shelves laden with china, pewter and stoneware, smaller ovens set into one wall for baking bread. At the far end a door gives onto the pastry room and boiling house. Vaesy thinks to himself: I could fit my town house on Thames Street into this space and still have room for the garden.
Sprint, the head cook, is waiting for them, alerted by a servant sent in advance. He is a ruddy-faced fellow with a barrel chest and a good belly, as sound a testimonial to what flows from the Nonsuch kitchens as you could wish for. Unusually for one of England’s great houses, he’s not French.
