The Sweet Smell of Decay (20 page)

‘I be an unholy wretch, my pretty gentleman,’ she grinned, eyes bright, ‘which be my role in the world, but I don’t profit by it. If I am to look after your goods then I do you a service, for which ye shall pay me well. And if you pay me well, then you may leave your goods here, and be sure they will still be here upon your return.’

‘Aye, woman.’ The sack was thick and heavy. It soaked into my blood quickly and hit my head hard, catching me unawares. The room began to swim.

‘My name is Mary.’ She turned to Dowling and pointed towards the far corner of the dark room. ‘Bring it over this way.’ Picking up a broom as she walked forwards, she set about sweeping the straw off a wooden door, laid flat in the floor. She pointed at a great rusty ring. ‘You pull it open. It is too heavy for me.’

Dowling found a short metal rod with a hook at the end of it. Placing the hook in the ring, he pulled. The door swung slowly open, though Dowling had to exert himself mightily to achieve it. Once open we stood in a ring staring down into the blackness. Wooden steps led down. The old woman grumbled and muttered and shuffled away to fetch a torch.

‘Harry and I will go down. You two stay here.’ Dowling cast the old woman a quick glance, before gently steering Hewitt towards the black hole. I followed, carrying the flaming stick that the old woman had given me.

‘I don’t reckon it’s been opened for a while.’ Dowling looked back over his shoulder. The staircase was short, and
led down into a small cellar four yards square. It smelt damp and stale, but I could see no pools of water, nothing growing on the walls.

‘Clean and dry,’ Dowling announced. He pushed Hewitt down against a wall, arms still tied behind his back, and pulled the bag off his head. Still I couldn’t see Hewitt’s eyes. Dowling pulled a piece of rope from his pocket and tied Hewitt’s legs together tight at the ankle and at the knee. I pulled the gag from Hewitt’s mouth. Crouching on my haunches I watched him closely. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, before settling motionless to stare back. We sat like that a little while, Hewitt expressionless, his black eyes promising horrible vengeance, me staring back, my drunken brain wandering painlessly. This was the Devil, and he was in the dungeon where he should be. I felt brave.

‘We will leave you here awhile, Hewitt. A day or so. I fear that you’ll not have light, for there is nowhere for me to put the torch.’ I smiled humourlessly. ‘You’ll not have food for a while, either. That’s by choice. I will leave you here for a day or so and then I’ll be back. When I come back, I’ll ask you again who killed Anne Giles, who killed John Giles, who sent Mottram and Wilson, who killed Mottram and Wilson. I pray that you will give me good answers, Hewitt. If not, then we will leave you here to rot. Lock the door and not come back. Do you understand, Hewitt?’

‘I understand,’ spake the Devil at last. ‘You’re trying to scare me.’

‘Aye,’ I nodded, for he was right. ‘All true. Also true that I will leave you here for good if you don’t tell me what I need to know. Consider it, Hewitt. How may I let you go? You tried to kill me once, methinks. What would I do tomorrow?
Release you? Then you would try and kill me again. This is my dilemma. I hope that you have an answer for me tomorrow. Leaving you here to starve doesn’t appear to be so stupid, for none would ever find you.’ I stood slowly, my knees cracking. I had made up the words as they entered my brain, but it was a profound analysis, I decided.

‘I can’t tell you, Lytle,’ he shook his head slowly, ‘even if I wanted to.’

‘I will see you tomorrow, God willing.’ I turned and headed back to the staircase. ‘I will leave the gag out, Hewitt, but if you call out then they will throw water over you until you stop.’ I climbed the stairs, and heaved the trapdoor closed again. It fell with a crash. Dowling secured it with a chain, locked it, and handed the key to me with a solemn face. Unhappy.

‘I like this less than you do,’ I told them all, ‘but remind yourselves what Hewitt is, and of the blackness of his heart. Remember Anne Giles.’

‘Aye, right enough, Harry,’ Dowling muttered. ‘If there be found among you any man who hath wrought wickedness in the sight of the Lord, thou shalt bring him forth and stone him with stones until he dies.’

‘I have to go,’ I wiped my brow. I sensed that I was very close to unravelling this great mystery and was feverish to see it broken. I just needed a quart of sack to lubricate my thinking. ‘Walk me back to Fleet Street.’

Stinking Lane was a narrow passage of small cramped houses that ran north of Newgate Market, east to Christ Church. It was a loud and lively neighbourhood where children ran about your feet and grabbed at your pocket. And it did stink. An open sewer ran almost the width of the lane. Marching fast, we attracted stares and curious looks. A very old and rotten apple missed the back of Dowling’s head by about two inches. A child shrieked with laughter. A man leant against his doorway unshaven and unclean, only half attired, despite the cold, wintry air.

‘Who is this witness?’ I pulled my coat about my neck. I had been settled down for the evening in front of a new fire when Dowling had arrived suddenly. Said he had a witness to the John Giles murder.

‘A slaughterer. Lives close by.’

It was indeed close by, a small cramped house. We were ushered in by a nervous old woman, who laughed constantly with her mouth, if not with her eyes. Trying to both lead and shepherd us to a table where the slaughterer sat, she giggled as she breathed, the giggles interrupted only by a twitch and occasional wild gasping laugh.

An aura surrounded him. His skin was white and clear as if he had been hosed down, but there were patches that had been missed – under his nails, at the roots of his hair. A bit like Dowling – only worse. My knees buckled when the woman pushed a chair at me from behind. The slaughterer sat slumped, exhausted by his day’s efforts. He didn’t look like a slaughterer; he was old, thin and wiry.

‘You saw the killing on the Bridge.’ Dowling’s low pronouncement was more of a statement than a question. The woman collapsed in a bout of particularly violent cackling, but her face gave lie to the apparent mirth. She looked terrified, fit to burst into tears. The slaughterer shot her a veiled look and she almost exploded out of the room into the back.

‘Aye, I saw it.’

‘You were up at that hour of the morning?’ If he was up at that hour of the morning then he could only have been drunk.

‘Aye.’

‘What was it you saw?’

‘Aye, well,’ the old slaughterer sighed deeply. ‘I was walking slowly across the Bridge from the Bear. I was in no hurry, so perhaps my feet were quiet. I saw the man who was killed. He was standing at the palings. I couldn’t see him very well. Then I saw the other man and I stopped, to make sure that there was no villainy.’

‘Villainy?’

‘He looked like he had a knife, so I stood in the shadow like any man would. He was big, built like the tower of St Paul’s. He had broad shoulders and was taller than any man I’ve seen for a long time. I can’t give you a better description because he was clothed from head to toe, I couldn’t see no part of him. He wore a scarf around the bottom of his face, round his mouth, and he had a hat pulled down over his eyes. He had a rope. Not on his person, but at the floor by his feet. One end was tied to a big hook, a hook in the wall of the building. I don’t know why there was a hook there.’

He stopped speaking and looked like he had fallen asleep. I leant over and prodded him, to make him start talking again.

‘Maybe it had been put there special. He had another rope he used to truss him like he was a chicken. He just walked over, took him in one hand and placed him on the floor face down. Then he put one knee on his back and bound him up. It’s no easy thing to bind an animal on your own. Bind him he did, though, fast. He tied his hands first and then his legs. The little man kicked and screamed, but he was too small. The big man put a knee on his neck. That stopped the screaming.’ The slaughterer’s eyes were distant as if he was seeing it all again. Sweat beads formed at his temples, his cheeks were drawn. ‘You might ask me why I did nothing.’ He sighed and shook his head. ‘It wasn’t that I was afeared, though I was. I just couldn’t think what to do. So I stood there watching until it was too late. It’s difficult to fathom.’

‘Aye,’ Dowling said softly.

‘He picked up the body with two hands. The little man stared up at the big man in terror. He wriggled. His face was white and every muscle of it was drawn tight. The big man said something to him before he threw him off, but I couldn’t
hear what it was. Then there was a snapping noise. It was only then I saw what he’d done, tied one end of the rope to the hook.’

It made me feel ill just to think of it again, the sound of a joint being ripped from its socket. I wouldn’t be eating chicken legs for a while.

The slaughterer turned to look us in the eyes. ‘I tell you, the man who did that murder is a devil and will ne’er be forgiven. It was planned to cause most pain and most spectacle. By God you should have seen that little man’s face. He knew what was going to happen before it happened. I would rather be hung, drawn and quartered.’

It was quiet in the room. Neither of us could think of anything to ask or to say, and the slaughterer sat in bitter silence.

‘Thank you, sir. I think we’ll leave you for now.’ Dowling picked up his hat. The slaughterer muttered something that neither of us heard. We found our way out quietly, the slaughterer’s wife having hidden herself away somewhere, as far away from her husband and his experience as she could get. We walked slowly back towards Newgate Street.

‘You know, I am not so sure now that Hewitt is our man,’ Dowling whispered into my ear. ‘Before, I was certain.’

‘Aye, unless we can show that he is acquainted with a giant that wears a scarf and hat.’

This was not all that troubled me. Baptists. I wanted to talk to someone who could help me understand better the significance of the religious connection. Despite every best effort, I could think of none better than Prynne for that.

I went to the Tower straightaway, though it was late, for I wanted to talk to Prynne alone. The porter at the Bulwark Gate looked at me strangely but was not disposed to engage me in conversation. Miserable low dog of a fellow. Speaking of loathsome creatures, I bumped into Wade on his way home for the day.

‘Harry Lytle! Truly as I live!’ he exclaimed, wrinkling his nose and grinning. ‘What’s news in the world? Your custom is out, so we hear? Labouring for the King himself, so we are told? This is something like!’

‘Aye, something like. Would you do me a favour, Wade?’

‘What favour?’

‘Ask Prynne that I would see him over at John’s Chapel.’

‘Tell him yourself, I’m going home,’ Wade retorted, looking most offended. ‘Why would you meet him in John’s Chapel anyway? It’s a right old mess, no one’s yet been fain to touch it. No one goes near it.’

‘I need to speak to him alone, Wade. Give him the message else I promise you he will be vexed.’

Wade scowled at me, keen to be away, but his fear of Prynne prevented him from declining my request. Swearing and stamping his feet, he turned on his heel and headed back whence he had come. I hurried past the low portcullis of the Bloody Tower before climbing the slope beneath the cold shadow of the forbidding White Tower. I touched my forelock to a yeoman, a man I recognised. Stinking of wine, his eyes rolling, he was wearing only the top half of his uniform and walked unsteadily. I gave him wide berth. A group of five soldiers stood at the bottom of the wooden steps that led up to the Tower entrance, chatting, bored. I walked past without stopping. The White Tower stood the height of twenty men; its
walls were thirteen feet thick. Commissioned in the eleventh century by William the Conqueror, it was built to serve both as palace and fortress. Nowadays it was used to store rifles, ammunition, and lots and lots of gunpowder.

At the top of the staircase I turned right, and climbed the spiral staircase to the first floor. The chapel was located at the top of the staircase before the entrance to the rest of the floor. The frozen winter sky shone chilling white through the arched windows over the nave, framing a simple wooden cross in silhouette. I walked across the stone flagstones, cleared of seating. To either side, in aisles behind sturdy stone arcades, were newly fitted wooden shelves, all of them packed tight with scrolls. Most were property rights for parishes towards the northern city walls. Dust hung in the air like fine white gauze. I waited there in one of the aisles, out of sight of any that might pass idly by.

Prynne was famous for having lost his ears – bit by bit. The flappy top bits were cropped thirty years ago before I was even born, after he published
Histriomastix
, a long, boring tirade against every form of entertainment that man had invented. In it he called women actors ‘notorious whores’, an insult said to be directed at the Queen. The King fined him, pilloried him at Westminster and cut the tops off his ears. Don’t know why he bothered. No one would have read the book if he’d just let it be. He was a frightening, furious man whose acquaintance I had avoided whenever possible when he had been my better and superior. Now I was free of him, yet here I was again.

‘Lytle?’ A familiar voice snapped, not much later.

‘Mr Prynne.’ I emerged out of my hiding place.

‘Thee would speak to me, Mr Lytle, before Keeling’s soldiers come to take you to Tyburn.’ His long face stared at
me mournfully through the gloom. Walking towards me he ran a long crooked forefinger over the wooden shelves, eyeing the scrolls with steely resolve. I couldn’t help but stare at the long curls that covered his temples on their way down to his chin. Three years after
Histriomastix
he got into trouble again, this time for publishing ‘News from Ipswich’. I haven’t read that either – caring little what happens in Ipswich – but it is said to be another long, weary collection of your usual Puritan rantings, not stuff I’d think twice about if I was King. Charles, though, cut off the hard gristly bits of his ears and branded him on the face with a burning iron ‘S L’ – seditious libeller. Not what I would call setting a good example when it comes to toleration and goodwill unto others. But then what would I know? Prynne twitched his nose.

‘Sir, I need your counsel.’

Prynne snorted, though I could tell that he was flattered. ‘What counsel would thee seek of me, Lytle?’

Prynne had been in Parliament many years ago. He was kicked out for opposing the army, both their intention to execute Charles I, and their advocacy of religious toleration. A Puritan, he had been utterly opposed to Charles I’s policies, but he was no regicide. Now he was no royal confidant, nor was he a politician or schemer about Court – just an eccentric, old outcast. I felt I could trust him, yet I was wary. In him I saw something of John Parsons.

‘I think that the Lord Chief Justice may be involved.’

‘Of course he is involved. He is Lord Chief Justice, and put Joyce to death.’

‘Yes, which is strange in itself, methinks, that he should take such an active interest when the evidence against Joyce was so questionable. Since then I have found out that his
daughter may have taken her own life ten years ago when she was with child. Perhaps it was William Ormonde’s child.’

‘William Ormonde’s child?’ Prynne’s old face turned a deep crimson. Standing silent, his thin body shook with wrath, eyes fixed on mine. ‘Who says so?’

‘The surgeon that found Jane Keeling’s body says that she was with child when she took her own life. When you consider the nature of Anne Giles’s death – an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth – and Keeling’s own behaviour in this matter – then it is easy to come to that conclusion. I think Shrewsbury heard the rumours too, though I am not supposed to mention his name, and I think he has laboured to have me discover it.’

Prynne stared at me, his lips twisted into a gnarled scar. His eyes were a watery light blue, pinhole black pupils aimed at me. Clenching his fists, he breathed noisily through his nostrils. ‘Then now you know it all.’

I picked up a scroll and blew the dust off it. So many secrets. ‘I am not so sure. The trail was laid so carefully. There is one thing that troubles me.’

‘Speak!’

‘While at Epsom, both Mary Ormonde and William Ormonde himself let it be known that Ormonde and Keeling were once great friends.’

‘It’s well known. That is no great mystery.’

I looked into Prynne’s poisonous face. ‘Aye, but they were both Baptists.’

Prynne’s body stilled. ‘They told you this?’

I nodded. ‘Mary Ormonde did so with great deliberation, William Ormonde seemed to speak it more casually. But why should either of them tell us, strangers, that the two of them were once dissenters? Even if it is known widely, and I know
not whether it is the case, why make particular mention of it to the strangers?’

‘Why indeed?’ Prynne put a hand to his chin, his brow lowered as he paced the floor in puzzled thought. ‘Why indeed?’ He found an old stool buried beneath a pile of parchment and sat on it, sending the records flying through the air. ‘Give me time to think.’ With his head in his hands and his elbows on his knees, all I could see was the back of his old head.

It was silent in the chapel. The bright white light that shone through the long narrow windows turned to grey, and shadows crept out from the ends of the aisles. I sat down on the floor, my back against a shelf and waited. I would wait all night if necessary.

Prynne sat straight then pointed at me. ‘Ye said that Ormonde was
not
father of the girl’s child?’

‘No,’ he could point at me all he liked. ‘I said that I was not sure that he
was
.’

‘Then why did Keeling kill Anne Ormonde, if it were not so?’

‘Perhaps he didn’t.’

‘Oh no. He killed the girl, that much is clear.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because Shrewsbury believes it to be so. Shrewsbury is the Devil himself, the serpent that winds itself about the tree in the garden of England. He that is deceitful and self-serving.’

‘Oh.’ That was my beloved patron he was talking about.

‘Both Ormonde and the girl tell thee they were Baptists. Keeling kills the daughter. There must be something that Ormonde did in the past, or something that Ormonde knows that Keeling would not have him divulge – aye, that’s it!’ Prynne stood suddenly. The stool slowly toppled over and
rolled away. ‘That must be it.’ He descended upon me with his arms held wide – a fearsome sight. ‘They were Baptists together. They were involved in some plot, some malicious scheming. Ormonde has threatened to divulge it so Keeling has killed his daughter.’