The Dance of Death (12 page)

The next thing I knew, of course, it was day, a morning of heavy frost and needle-sharp sunlight, the houses on the distant Southwark shore nothing more than a grey shadow lost behind a shimmering veil of amber-coloured mist. Everywhere was brilliance and sparkle, from the glittering rooftops to the sun-spangled water-stairs. I had opened the shutter before pulling on my clothes in an effort to free my dream-clogged mind from the clinging rags of sleep. The cold air was better than a draught of wine.

I made my way downstairs to the common hall for breakfast. Dried oatmeal and salted herring, washed down by more small beer, made me thankful that my stay in Baynard's Castle was limited, and I could only pray that, in my disguise of a moneyed gentleman, food and lodgings provided on the forthcoming journey would prove to be of the best (although I had little doubt that Timothy would be exhorting us all to economy before we left).

The morning was young, and it was some hours yet to my next meeting with the tailor in order to try on my new clothes. I recalled guiltily that the duke had ordered me to stay within the precincts of the castle until my departure, but I was restless and not in the mood for doing as I was told. The underlying resentment at my enforced absence from home was still there, gnawing away at my vitals and making me scornful of compliance towards those whom I considered responsible for my present situation. Disobedience and rebellion were in the air.

As soon as I had finished eating therefore, and happily not having seen any sign of Eloise Gray, I made my way outside to the water-stairs and hailed the first passing boat. It happened to be one of the covered twopenny ones, but I didn't want to wait longer than I had to.

‘Southwark,' I said briefly, stepping in.

I disembarked at roughly the same spot where I had seen the mysterious boatman land some hours previously. I climbed what I was certain were the same steps from the foreshore and looked about me.

I was no stranger to Southwark, that sprawling borough which was a part of London and yet outside the city's jurisdiction. It was, on the one hand, a criminal's paradise, a maze of waterfront streets, teeming with vice of every sort, the home of more brothels, both female and male, than a man could dream of. There were bear-baiting pits, cock-fighting rings and the stews, all paying rent to the Bishop of Winchester, which was why the whores were known as ‘Winchester geese'. The bawdiest of entertainments took place at the outdoor theatres, and many buildings had never been repaired since Jack Cade's rebellion thirty-two years before. But on the other hand, Southwark was not all drunkenness and lechery and rowdy pleasure. Some of the taverns, like the Walnut Tree and the Tabard Inn (made famous by Master Chaucer in his tales) were highly respectable, while many of the clergy, including a couple of bishops and several abbots, had large houses in the vicinity of St Thomas's Hospital and the Church of St Mary Overy.

My previous business on this side of the river had, I regret to say, all been among the seamier denizens of Southwark. Today, however, I was looking for a more respectable sort of man. I collared the first boatman I saw just as he was about to descend the steps to the strand.

‘Do any of you fellows work at night?' I asked. ‘Through the night, that is, not just after dark.'

The man, tall and bald with a broken nose, regarded me suspiciously, but seemed a little reassured by my shabby clothes. ‘You ain't from these parts,' he said by way of answer.

‘No. I'm from the West Country. Somerset,' I said impatiently. ‘Well, do you?'

‘Do I what?'

‘Know of any boatmen who work all night?'

‘All right! All right! Keep your breeches on. Why do you want to know?'

I breathed deeply. I had forgotten how wary these people were of ‘foreigners'. ‘I might have need of one, that's all.'

Suddenly, my companion grinned and tapped the side of his nose. ‘Oho! Like that, eh?' What exactly he thought I was up to, I had no idea, but it was obviously something nefarious. ‘Well, good luck to you, friend. There is one fellow who'll row you across river at any hour you like. Jeremiah Tucker's his name. But he'll charge you double rates if it's after curfew.'

I nodded. ‘Fair enough. He's taking a risk. Where do I find him?'

The bald-headed man scanned the foreshore, where a number of boats were lined up at the water's edge. He waved a large hand at one of them. ‘That's his, over there. The one with the blue canopy.' A faint frown puckered his forehead. ‘He's late this morning. It ain't like Jeremiah to oversleep.'

‘Maybe he had a client last night,' I suggested.

‘Aye, p'r'aps he did. But it don't usually make him late for work the following morning.'

‘So, where do I find him?' I asked again.

Once more suspicion gleamed in the slightly protuberant eyes. Then he shrugged. ‘I suppose if you ask around enough, someone'll tell you, so it might as well be me. You don't mean him any harm, do you?'

‘Not the least in the world. I just want to ask him a question.'

‘We-ell . . .' The boatman considered me for a moment longer before deciding in my favour. ‘You don't look like anyone in the pay of the law.' I abstained from pointing out that if I were indeed a lawman, I shouldn't be strutting around in my best Sunday-go-to-church clothes. But there! He had the brawn. What did he want with brains? He went on, ‘Jerry Tucker lives a couple o' streets back from here, near a tavern called the Rattlebones. Just ask for him. Most people hereabouts know who he is.'

I thanked the man profusely and watched him descend the steps, to where a queue of folk had already formed alongside his own boat, before turning away from the wharf. Another enquiry, two minutes later, of a baker, plying his early morning trade, elicited the fact that the Rattlebones was just round the nearest corner.

‘But you won't get much service there this morning. There were a nasty murder there last night.'

‘Oh?'

The baker nodded. ‘Will Tanner, one of our locals, were stabbed to death in a quarrel. God knows what it were about, but the little bastard what did it got clean away in spite o' the hue and cry.'

The story reminded me of Reynold Makepeace, and the baker and I spent ten minutes or so deploring the lawlessness of the London and Southwark streets. But time was pressing and I had to return to Baynard's Castle before I was missed. I asked for Jeremiah Tucker and was told the fifth house from the Rattlebones on the left.

I turned the corner, walked past the tavern, giving it a curious glance as I did so, counted five houses along, and was just in time to catch a plump woman, erupting from the cottage like a bat out of hell and screaming at the top of her voice, in my arms.

‘What is it? What's the matter?' I asked.

She continued screaming. I shook her hard, but to no avail. Other people were emerging from their houses, attracted by the noise. Afraid that they would get the wrong impression, I slapped her, putting the full force of my right arm behind the blow.

‘What's the matter?' I yelled again.

She made a gobbling sound.

A man stepped forward from the little crowd that had now gathered around us, and clapped the plump woman on the shoulder. ‘Marjorie, tell us what's the matter,' he urged. He looked at me. ‘Is this fellow molesting you?'

The woman shook her head vigorously while I uttered a furiously indignant denial. Sweet Virgin! Was I beginning to look like a man desperate enough to force my attentions on middle-aged goodwives?

‘What is it, then?' the man persisted, while the rest nodded encouragement.

The plump woman gave another despairing moan. Tired of this, I pushed her gently into the arms of her friends and strode into the cottage with a determination that belied my growing fear – almost a certainty – of what I was going to find. My presentiment was all too soon proved correct. A man whom I presumed to be Jeremiah Tucker was stretched out on the beaten-earth floor, face upwards, his throat neatly cut from ear to ear – a good, clean stroke with which I had seen slaughtermen in my native Somerset kill cattle. It was Humphrey Culpepper all over again.

My breath caught in my throat. A vision of that terrible wall painting in the north cloister of St Paul's entered my head:
The Dance of Death
, the
Danse Macabre
of the French, the grinning skeletons dragging away their victims one by one . . . With an effort, I pulled myself together. I must get out of here and quickly. I had defied the duke's orders only to find myself in another imbroglio in which I seemed destined to play a leading part.

I leaned down and quickly touched the unfortunate Jeremiah Tucker's face and hands He was stiff and cold. This murder had taken place some time ago, but once again I had been making enquiries about the dead man. I glanced around. The one-roomed cottage was small and, in general, ill maintained, but the shutters of the single window opened silently on recently oiled hinges. My luck was in and I was out – both legs over the sill – of that window and running along the backs of the houses into the next street, plunging deeper into the maze of narrow alleyways until I was far enough away to risk descending to the foreshore, where I signalled to a cruising boatman looking for a fare. A short time later – although it seemed like an eternity – I was back within the walls of Baynard's Castle, sitting on the edge of my bed in my tiny room, desperately trying to control the trembling of my limbs.

Once I was more myself, I stretched out on my bed, linked my hands behind my head and tried to make sense of what was going on.

There had to be a connection between the deaths of Humphrey Culpepper and Jeremiah Tucker. The coincidence of two men having their throats cut within a day or so of each other was nothing extraordinary in a city like London, or indeed in any city, but the chances of them both being despatched in an identical manner – so neatly and with such precision – were far greater. The odds against that happening were impossibly short. Furthermore, both victims were linked – although they did not know it – with Baynard's Castle, for if Jeremiah Tucker was not the boatman who had dropped off the mysterious visitor at the castle's water-stairs in the early hours of the morning, then I'd never trust my instincts again.

According to my bald-headed friend, Tucker was a boatman willing to flout authority and work during the hours of night, carrying, no doubt, many thieves and robbers across from Southwark to London to ply their trade under cover of darkness, and then to ferry them home again. And yet the fact that Bald Head had only mentioned one man didn't mean to say that there weren't others . . .

I drew a deep breath, swung my legs over the edge of the bed and sat upright, telling myself not to be a fool or to be seduced into following false trails. The fact that the one man mentioned was now dead – and dead in exactly the same circumstances as Humphrey Culpepper – spoke for itself. He had to be the man whose progress I had watched back across the river some six or seven hours earlier. Someone had been waiting for his return to the Southwark side, followed him home, knocked and been admitted. Why? The most probable answer to that question was that he was supposed to be the payer, the man who had brought the money now that the mission had been successfully accomplished. But instead of bringing silver, he had brought merely a knife, and when the boatman's back was turned, had seized him and cut his throat, swiftly, cleanly, so that the poor man had known only a momentary fear before he died. That, at least, was something.

This time, however, the blood that drenched the attacker would not have been so easily disguised as it had been near the Shambles. But then, it was dark; fewer people would have been about, and those who were were minding their own shady business, disinclined to pry into that of others. A quick plunge into the murky waters of the nearby Thames – not something I should have cared to do, but you couldn't be fussy if you'd just killed a man – and much of the blood would have been washed off. Or maybe the murderer had gone prepared with a change of clothing.

All of which, of course, posed the questions: who had been landed at Baynard's Castle and why was his – her? – arrival to be kept so secret that it was worthwhile to kill a man? It was at this point that I began to realize the seriousness of the situation I was in. The murder of Humphrey Culpepper had not appeared so frightening on its own; the old man might or might not have been killed in order to prevent my having any contact with him. But if his death was linked to that of the boatman, as it so plainly was, then truly ruthless forces were against us. This had to be the work of someone who would stop at nothing.

It was my duty to inform Timothy and Duke Richard of the second murder straight away, but the thought was daunting. To begin with, I would be forced to admit that I had flagrantly disobeyed the duke's order, flouted a royal command. Secondly, I had been seen and, with my height and West Country accent, inevitably noted at the scene of a second crime and, doubtless, my description passed on to the authorities. And, of course, to anyone else who was interested. The duke and his spymaster general would be furious, to put it no higher. I should be in for a very uncomfortable half-hour (another understatement). I might even find myself facing punishment. So, in the end, after careful consideration, weighing up this and that, I decided to say nothing. It was more than probable, almost a certainty in fact, that the murder in Southwark would be thought of insufficient importance to come to the Duke of Gloucester's ears, or even Timothy's – just another killing among the many that occurred every night south of the Thames.

I slid off the bed and stretched, feeling calmer for having arrived at a decision, no matter how craven it might be. I justified it by telling myself that I hadn't asked to be put in this situation and that, on top of everything else, I didn't deserve further recriminations and the discomfort of royal disapproval. What the duke and Timothy didn't know wouldn't hurt them, and I could be extra vigilant and on my guard throughout the coming journey.