by S. W. Perry
At this, Lizzy says, ‘She’s tired, Dr Shelby. Let her rest.’
But Elise has too many words inside her still waiting to be let out. ‘He was my brother, sir. I was carrying him on my back. It was hot, and I couldn’t manage another step. Then the angel found us.’
‘An angel?’ says John Lumley, wondering if the child is about to claim divine visitation.
‘We had left London by the Fleet Bridge, three days before, I think it was. I was so tired, so hungry. We were crossing a stream. Then a woman came to help us. I thought she must be an angel – I’d been praying so hard for one to come.’
‘And did you go with this woman?’ Nicholas asks.
‘Yes. She gave us shelter and food, let us play in her garden…’
‘Do you know where this was?’
‘In the country. I remember the smell of the warm grass. There was birdsong and the humming of the bees.’
‘And why did you leave?’ Nicholas enquires, catching the hurried rasp of Quigley’s nib as he writes.
‘We didn’t leave. She took us – to somewhere bad.’
‘What happened there, Elise? Can you tell us?’
‘Have we not taxed her enough?’ asks Lizzy. ‘She should sleep.’
But Elise is not ready for rest. ‘I began to realize she wasn’t an angel after all,’ she says.
‘Can you describe this new place she took you to?’ Nicholas asks.
‘High walls. Dark, and dusty. Very dusty. Even the Cardinal’s Hat was cleaner.’
‘The Cardinal’s Hat?’ enquires Lumley. ‘Is that a tavern?’
‘A bawdy-house on Bankside, my lord,’ Nicholas explains. ‘It’s where her mother took the children when she fell into drunkenness and penury.’
Lumley closes his eyes for a brief moment. A bawdy-house named the ‘Cardinal’s Hat’ – his Romish faith has taken more insults today than he can stomach.
‘By then I was very sleepy most of the time,’ Elise continues without prompting, ‘and I had nightmares, even during the day. I think it was the angel working magic upon me. But I do remember there were other people there.’
‘How many people, Elise?’ asks Nicholas, trying to sound almost uninterested.
‘There was a blind woman and her sister, and an old man with only one hand. They were kind to me. And then there was Jacob.’
He squats down beside her. ‘This Jacob – was he a young man with a round face, a face like the moon? A young man who was very much like a little child?’
Elise smiles at the memory. ‘Jacob is sweet. I’ve known him a long time, since I was small. He lived on Scrope Alley. His father was a poulterer. He used to bring us a chicken once a month, until he stopped coming because my mother frightened him.’
‘Do you know where Jacob is now, Elise?’
‘Yes, of course. Jacob is still with the Devil.’
A muttered Kyrie eleison, Christie eleison from Francis Deniker, followed by an Amen from John Lumley. Lizzy covers her mouth with her hands.
‘And your brother, little Ralph?’ asks Nicholas.
Elise’s eyes become wet and extraordinarily bright as the anguish floods back into them. ‘Yes, Ralphie also. Ralphie is still with the Devil.’
The sound of Gabriel Quigley’s pen as it scratches has slowed. Nonsuch seems too perfect a place in which to write of Satan.
‘How do you know it was the Devil, child?’ asks Lumley cautiously. ‘Did he manifest himself to you?’
A sudden tremor runs through Elise’s body. ‘No, sir, he did not. But only the Devil would be about such work as I saw there.’
And then she tells them of a night, shortly after she had arrived in the place she now begins to call the Devil’s house – the night she went in search of her brother.
‘There was an archway, just beyond the dormitory where we were being kept. There were steps, leading down. I was afraid to go, but I knew Ralphie would be even more afraid down there without me. You see, I thought I might find him at the bottom.’
‘And did you?’
‘No.’
Elise begins to rock back and forth as the memories hem her in. Lizzy moves closer to her, defensively.
‘What did you find there, Elise? Will you tell us?’
‘I found a dead man,’ she says in a coldly matter-of-fact voice. ‘A dead man in a chamber lit by a thousand candles.’
Lizzy stifles a gasp. The scratching of Quigley’s pen has stopped entirely.
‘He was on a cross, like our saviour, but turned all about,’ Elise continues in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘There was blood. I think it must have been old blood, because it came from high up on his leg and ran all the way down to his head, like wax on a candle, only black, as black as the river at night. There was a bucket close by his head. The bucket was full of his blood. I did not know that a man had so much blood in him. I knew then why the angel had brought us to this place.’
39
Do we have this aright?’ asks John Lumley sometime later. He is sitting at his study desk like a justice of the peace at the quarter assizes, kneading the collar of his gown as if he’s been called upon to deliver a particularly complex judgement. ‘Will the words do?’
Elise is asleep in the servants’ quarters, after much gentling and soothing by Sprint, Joanna and the other members of the household, along with more fortifying hippocras than a thirteen-year-old should rightly drink.
‘They may “do”, John,’ says Lizzy from her seat at the window. ‘But not for a moment can they accurately convey what the poor child has suffered.’
For his part, Nicholas is retelling Elise’s story in his head, marvelling at her courage, appalled by what she has seen, what she has endured. Her words are seared into his mind. He wonders if the body she’d described hanging upside-down in the cellar was that of the old man with the stump for a hand, or a victim yet unknown. He remembers the wheals on Jacob Monkton’s wrists and ankles – evidence that he, too, had suffered on this monstrous cross. He wonders how Elise could have seen what she’d seen and not gone mad. And he wonders if he’s right – that it all happened barely ten minutes’ walk from the Jackdaw, in the grim heart of the Lazar House.
‘How can we be sure these words are nothing but fantasy, mere dreams?’ Quigley asks. ‘The maid confessed she was often very sleepy and suffered nightmares, even in the daytime. Yet on this particular night, she was apparently in full possession of her wits. Explain that.’
‘I believe the woman she thought was an angel came and went at intervals,’ Nicholas says. ‘Whatever she was giving to Elise and the others to keep them compliant, the effect was dependent on constant replenishment. Elise believed it was magic – “the angel’s magic” is what she called it. Bianca Merton and I suspect it was a concoction of henbane or some other powerful essence.’
‘And who exactly is Bianca Merton?’ asks Quigley, scanning his notes for her and failing.
‘She’s mistress of the Jackdaw tavern, on Bankside,’ Nicholas tells him.
‘Mistress Merton, apparently, is the reason Dr Shelby has come to Nonsuch,’ Lumley tells his secretary. ‘It’s a long and somewhat troubling story, and we have Robert Cecil to thank for it.’
‘A tavern-mistress?’ says Quigley to Nicholas contemptuously.
‘We’re close friends. She knows all that I know.’
Lumley says, ‘Gabriel, do me some service and recount the part where the girl escaped her confinement.’
Quigley does, as though reading a shopping list. ‘Here it is, my lord. “When I heard the sound of the Devil’s footsteps returning, I went back up the stairs. I did not want to leave Ralph, but I knew not where they had taken him. I knew I had to get away from the Devil’s house. I tried to get Jacob to come with me, but he didn’t understand.” Then Dr Shelby asks her how she found a way out. The child states, “I discovered a window, high up. It was boarded, but the boards were loose. Just beyond the window were the branches of a tree.” Then comes some trivia about
how the maid used to climb trees when she was younger, how her brother would watch her, laugh and shout “squirrel” – or some such nonsense.’
‘Thank you, Gabriel, you appear to have it down pat,’ says Lumley. ‘What is your view of her story?’
‘If you want my professional opinion, my lord, it’s nothing but invention. Pure childish fantasy.’
‘And if it’s not?’
‘If you put the child before a magistrate she’ll likely revert to her former silence. What use will this supposed testament of hers be then?’
‘It’s all we have,’ says Nicholas, ‘and it fits with everything I know.’
‘Which is precious little of substance,’ Quigley says contemptuously. He turns to Lumley. ‘I make the observation only as a lawyer might, my lord. She didn’t even see the face of the man she claims had done these things.’ He scans the sheet of paper. ‘Here it is: Lord Lumley asks the child if the Devil manifested himself to her. Her reply: “No, sir, he did not.” There – she didn’t actually see anyone. If the Devil is at work here, I suggest he has done nothing but toy with a young girl’s powers of imagination.’
‘She’s telling the truth,’ Nicholas counters. ‘I’ve seen three of the bodies myself.’
Quigley looks at him sharply.
John Lumley turns to his secretary and says, apologetically, ‘Dr Shelby told me of Elise’s story, privily, while you were waiting outside the chapel. It would appear that everything the maid says is true – God forbid.’
Nicholas holds up three fingers of his left hand. ‘I saw Ralph Cullen’s body on the dissection table at the College of Physicians last August,’ he says. ‘He’d been pulled from the river by a waterman. I saw Jacob Monkton’s body at Mutton Lane stairs last Accession Day. And I saw the corpse of a preacher who’d been found by Battle Abbey creek just after Twelfth Night. All three had the same wounds to the leg. One victim had been bled dry, one bled out and the liver excised, one victim wholly eviscerated.’
Lumley frowns. ‘And the marks you and Master Sprint saw scratched into the soot by the bread ovens, what of them?’
‘At first I thought they described the wounds on the bodies. Now I think she was drawing what she saw in that cellar – the man hanging on the frame like an inverted crucifixion.’
‘So these wounds have nothing to do with devilry?’ Lumley asks.
‘They’re just the way the killer makes sure the artery is properly found and severed.’
‘Someone is going to have to tell Elise about her brother, Dr Shelby,’ says Lizzy. She shudders. ‘The poor, poor child – to have witnessed such a thing.’
‘I suspect she already has a pretty good idea of what’s happened to Ralph,’ Nicholas says. ‘But I think we should wait until her mind is strong enough to bear the burden.’
‘A justice of the Queen’s Bench must hear of this,’ Lumley says, reaching out to take the testimony from his secretary. ‘Or, better still, the Privy Council.’
Quigley shakes his head, giving up the papers almost grudgingly. ‘Again, my lord, I must counsel you to caution. I need hardly remind you how tenuous this will appear if you present it before a jury. Just look at the witnesses: a vagrant female child, a mortuary clerk and a woman who owns a tavern.’ He looks directly at Nicholas. ‘Not to mention a physician who’s also a paid informer. I understand from my contacts at the College that he has a recent history that can best be described as questionable.’
‘It’s the truth,’ says Nicholas. ‘And don’t think I haven’t had it refuted by any number of clerks and parish officers already.’
‘It’s late,’ says Lumley. ‘Gabriel, as usual you’ve been uncomplainingly dutiful. I shall decide what to do in the morning. As for you, Dr Shelby, I think you’ve provided us with more than enough shocks for one day. God grant us both an untroubled rest.’
In his chamber, Nicholas dips the hem of his shirt into a water bowl and cleans the dried blood from hip and buttock, washes the neat puncture made by the tip of Quigley’s dagger. It’s a small wound; he’s suffered worse bringing in the harvest at Barnthorpe. It seems a small price to pay for the gift Elise Cullen has given him. He climbs into bed, lies on his front for comfort and falls into an exhausted sleep.
Eleanor is waiting for him. She’s standing on the far bank of a river, her gown harried by the wind, her hair loose and billowing. The sky at her back is a boiling cauldron of dark cloud. She is calling to him, one arm outstretched like the doomed heroine of a Greek tragedy. Nicholas knows she is in terrible danger. He must cross the river to reach her. To save her. But there are things lurking just below the surface, things even worse than his own dread of failing her. A magnificent barge is moored nearby. In the prow, Robert Cecil is hunched over Francis Deniker’s writhing body. He’s hauling out the Jesuit’s bloody entrails while Fulke Vaesy stands at his shoulder, quoting the Bible and pointing to each organ with his ivory pointer.
Nicholas awakes with an anguished groan. His shirt is soaked in sweat, ice-cold against his back. The wound from Quigley’s knife throbs like a wasp’s sting in his hip. He sits up in bed and waits for his breathing to settle, for the hammering of his heart to soften. What has caused him to wake? Was it the dream, or a noise from the corridor outside his chamber? He has no idea of the time, though by the amount the candle on his table has burned down he can’t have been asleep more than an hour. The last wakeful moment he can remember was spent staring at the wall, wondering how he was going to protect Bianca once he’d told Robert Cecil that life hadn’t equipped him for the role of informer.
There it is again – a noise just loud enough to wake a habitually light sleeper. Less than a full tapping on the door, more than just a draught pushing it against its hinges. He calls out. ‘Who’s there?’
Silence. Or not quite silence. Then the distinct sound of feet hurrying away down the passage.
Nicholas throws back the covers and goes to the door, his way lit only by the candle and the muted glow from the embers in the hearth. He lifts the latch and looks out into the corridor. It’s empty. Cursing his overactive imagination, he turns back towards the bed.
As he does so, he sees in the candlelight a small sheet of parchment on the floor. He bends to retrieve it, cursing at the sudden sharp pain in his hip. Carrying it back to the bed, he reads the words scrawled in spidery black ink:
I know who killed the maid’s brother and the others. Come to me in the storeroom at the end of the mews. I shall wait no longer than cockcrow. Despite your promise before Lord Lumley not to denounce me, I must go out of England before the day’s end or perish.
40
Tonight is the first night the dreams do not come. Tonight Ralph’s weight does not fatigue her shoulders. Jacob Monkton does not disturb her ears with his gibberish. The eyeless woman who rocks to and fro incessantly has departed. The old, one-handed man who cannot remember where to find his mattress or the piss-pot has vanished. Tonight the sturdy walls of Nonsuch do not transform themselves into briary thickets and hedges. Elise is warm in her bed. Her stomach is full. She is not chilled to the bone, cramming discarded scraps of bad meat into her mouth, drinking from muddy puddles. All these trials have begun to fade from her consciousness like pain from a wound as it heals. In their stead comes a strange noise, which at first sounds like someone calling to her in a foreign language, calling from a long way off. It is the sound of her own voice.
When she’d returned to the servants’ dormitory, on the ground floor of the Nonsuch inner gatehouse, no one had thought to ask her why she’d been summoned to Lord Lumley’s privy apartments. They’d known she wouldn’t answer. Since when had the girl they called Betony ever answered a question?
Sprint had been wise enough to let her go in and find her own way of making landfall. She’d busied herself in preparation for sleep, washed under her linen kirtle with a rag wetted from the water tub in the corner, cleaned her teeth with leaves of eglantine. Then the familiar ritual: Joanna leading the women in their
evening prayers: Our Lord which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name… let thy kingdom come…
It took a few lines for someone to realize they had been joined by an extra voice.
The result couldn’t have been more dramatic. Joanna stopped dead in her tracks, as though she’d forgotten the words. Someone gasped. Every bowed head lifted and turned towards the girl. And then everyone was urging her on, as though they feared that if she stopped, the old impenetrable silence would come back to reclaim her.
And after that: much hugging and dancing and singing, which Joanna avowed was a most ungodly way to behave after the Lord’s Prayer, but joined in with anyway. Followed – at least for Elise – by the sleep of the saved.
But enough of the old wariness – the alert stringing of the senses for the faintest hint of danger – remains with her. Some two hours after she first closed her eyes she awakes to the murmur of voices in the corridor. The first she recognizes at once. It is Joanna’s.
‘Mercy, what time is this for you to be calling for the child again? She’s asleep. Let her rest.’
The answering voice is less familiar to her, and in her drowsiness she struggles to give it a face. ‘This cannot wait until morning. The child is to come now. Wake her, please.’
‘And what am I to tell the poor chub when I do?’
The voice is low and full of a dark urgency. ‘It is a privy matter, Mistress Joanna.’
‘Well, good or ill, it can wait until morning,’ says Joanna protectively.
‘Do you defy Lord Lumley?’
‘In no measure. But if he wishes to disturb the well-deserved sleep of our little talisman, he can come and speak to her here. She’s not a dog to be woken from the hearth whenever a body feels like making a pet of her. Have you any idea of the hour?’
Elise does not hear the reply, if indeed there is one. The call of her dreamless sleep is irresistible.