by Peter Tonkin
‘You are welcome to stay to dinner - both of you - if you can get back through the New Gate after curfew.’
‘That should be no trouble. I’ll get another link boy on the corner and the gate’s watchmen know me well enough.’ He tapped his purse, making the coins in it jingle.
‘So be it. Now, as you see, I have arranged a simple experiment.’ On John’s bench there sat two cages, each containing a scrawny street cat, both of them restless with hunger. ‘We have to use cats,’ John explained, very much in his element. ‘If we used mice we would be hard-put to see the symptoms as they unfold. I would prefer to use dogs, or even man-sized pigs, as the Roman physician Galen did, and get a clearer view still but the little sample we are testing might not present a clear effect in larger animals.’ He gestured to a small bowl which contained everything he had managed to retrieve from Spenser’s ear and pillow.
‘I have just enough here to split into two in case the first experiment is unsuccessful,’ he said. ‘But we have been given a pointer both in my garden and in Forman’s for it was hemlock that was taken from both.’
‘With what objective?’ wondered Rosalind. ‘Surely it would be wiser to take different poisons from each of you - then use a third one altogether, to confuse detection. To suggest belladonna and hemlock, for instance, but actually make use of arsenic.’
‘Only if evading detection was the objective’ said Tom, turning towards John. ‘In a situation I resolved only recently, the use of the murder weapon - the Irish bata or club - was done to announce who the murderers were and to put their opponents in fear of them.’ Rosalind nodded - she had been involved. Tom continued, ‘But here, I admit, such a procedure might well serve different ends; to assign blame to an innocent bystander, for instance - a carefully selected gull such as Will Shakespeare, per exemplum.
‘Well,’ said John. ‘Let us see. We are looking for the effects of belladonna, which are dilated pupils, sensitivity to light, loss of balance, staggering, flushing, severely dry mouth and throat, urinary retention, confusion, delirium, and convulsions; as much as might be discerned in a cat. Or we look out for those of hemlock poisoning which are as follows: stimulation followed by paralysis, vomiting, trembling, problems in movement, rapid respiration, salivation, plenteous urination, nausea, convulsions, coma and death.’
‘To translate that,’ said Tom, ‘a poisoned cat should first run madly round its cage but suddenly slow and stumble as though blind - for the pupils of its eyes will dilate as wide as any bathed in belladonna. It may vomit and shiver convulsively. It should pant and drool. It will go into convulsions, losing control of its bladder, then slide into a coma and so die. If memory serves the whole process should take one hour depending on the dose.’
John opened his mouth to question or further explain part of Tom’s description, but he was interrupted immediately.
‘You have done this before,’ said Rosalind harshly.
‘We have,’ answered Tom, ‘and with poisons even more deadly than hemlock.’
*
As Tom was speaking, John turned away and put half of the oil he had taken from Spenser’s ear in a small bowl, added a tiny amount of milk, mixed the two together and slid it up to the nearest cage. The caged cat thrust its head out eagerly and lapped up the milk at once. ‘One hour,’ said Tom.
‘One hour until it is dead,’ confirmed John, ‘if that really is either belladonna or hemlock at any rate. If Hal were here I would trust him to record the process so we could be certain. But he is not, so I will do so myself.’
‘If the lady Ann can be persuaded to send dinner in here I will keep you company,’ offered Tom.
‘And I,’ added Rosalind.
So it was arranged. The three of them sat round the table and positioned themselves so that they could keep an eye on the poisoned cat. One of the children brought a bowl of water and they all washed their hands - John most carefully; then he placed a pile of paper and a pen convenient to his elbow so he could record the stages of the cat’s demise.
The child who brought the water replaced it with a loaf of bread and a pat of good yellow butter. Then Elizabeth brought in three bowls of eel stew with horn spoons and a knife to spread the butter. While she was passing them all out a jug of small beer and three cups arrived.
Elizabeth turned to go but Tom prevented her. ‘A question for you, Elizabeth, answer truly and I will not detain you long.’
Elizabeth turned, shooting a guarded look at her father who refused to meet her eye. In the brief moment of silence that followed, Tom assessed her. Eighteen and full grown, blonde hair that would not do her bidding, blue eyes below arched brows and dark lashes, pink cheeks and pale peony lips - a little thin for his taste but set in a resolute line. A chin every bit as determined as Rosalind’s but giving the effect of wilfulness rather than strength.
‘How long have you been consulting Simon Forman?’ he asked.
She paled, her eyes wide with shock. ‘Who told you? Did Hal betray me?’
‘I have seen your birth chart in his house,’ said Tom equably. ‘How long have you been consulting Forman and for what purpose?’
‘If you measure up to your reputation in my father’s eyes at least you should be able to exercise your logic and answer that for yourself,’ she snapped.
‘It was the precise element of your future you wanted to know that interested me,’ he said. ‘Were you assessing outcomes with Hal or with other, more elevated, members of society?’
‘Hal!’ she sneered. ‘He follows me like a spaniel and is ever more faithful the crueller I treat him! If he has betrayed me...’
‘So.’ Tom cut off her fulminations firmly. ‘It is the offspring of some courtier who has turned your head, for I assume you have no designs upon any of the great men for whom your father works, many of whom are old enough to be your grandsires.’
‘I would wager,’ struck in Rosalind suddenly, ‘that there is no one particular lordling. They would hardly know that the apothecary’s girl even exists! She has Simon Forman drawing up her chart in the hope that he will guide her towards one or another so she may scheme to turn his head. With philtres or love-tokens I’ll be bound.’
‘Not so!’ snapped Elizabeth. ‘There is a widely-travelled young man in the household of Sir Thomas Edgerton, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal in York House, has a burning affection for me. He is chief secretary...’
‘Dear God in Heaven,’ said Tom, ‘you do not mean John Donne?’
ii
‘John Donne,’ Tom repeated, staring Elizabeth straight in the eyes. ‘Why the man is a rakehell and besides, I am certain he has designs upon young Anne More...’
‘That’s all you know, Master of Logic! John has told me of his love for me!’
‘And where did you meet this Master Donne?’ demanded her outraged father.
‘At St Paul’s. Mother sent me on an errand but Hal could not go with me so I went alone. She urgently wanted fruit in despite of the season, with child yet again I’ll wager, and there’s a fruit stall hard by St Pauls with some booksellers beside it. I was buying winter apples and he was looking at some poem books there. Then he came up and we fell to talking. He told me of himself and his adventures. Such places he has been to, such things has he seen and done. Such great men as are his acquaintance, Sir Walter Raleigh, the Earl of Essex...’
‘And so you started meeting more regularly?’ asked Tom, his voice deceptively gentle once more.
‘I got Hal to help,’ she tossed her head. ‘He will do anything for me. When Mother told me to run errands, Hal would come with me and I would meet John in St Paul’s Churchyard while Hal looked sadly on.’
‘But you were never alone?’
‘Never other than that first time. But he loves me. He has written poems to me...’
‘And to half the young women in London!’ said Tom, more firmly. ‘A rakehell recusant from an infamously Catholic family. His brother died in Newgate, imprisoned for sheltering the Jesui
t Priest Harrington as was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn three years ago after the pursuivants took him to the tender mercies of Rackmaster Topcliffe!’
‘He has told me all this. He looks to me as his angel who will redirect his footsteps into the purer Protestant path...’
‘He will direct his footsteps and more straight beneath your petticoats if you are not careful of him!’ answered Tom. ‘And to go to Simon Forman of all people to assess the likelihood of your snaring John Donne. That is fighting fire with fire with a vengeance. If one doesn’t have you, the other assuredly will!’
Tom’s words echoed in the room for a moment as everyone remained rigid with shock: John at the revelation, Elizabeth at the fact that no one had ever spoken to her like that in all her life and Rosalind at the behaviour of the poisoned cat.
Rosalind spoke first. ‘Look!’ she said. The cat was throwing itself from side to side. Its wide eyes were almost entirely black, their pupils yawning wide. Its mouth was agape, drool spraying from its lolling tongue. And even as they all swung round to see exactly what she was talking about, its legs gave out and it collapsed, quaking, onto the floor of the cage. A yellow pool of urine spread across the bench.
‘That did not take an hour, surely,’ said Tom, the outraged Elizabeth forgotten. He rose and crossed to the cage as John swiftly recorded the symptoms and their sequence. The shuddering animal was fighting for breath, emitting the faintest mewling sound as vomit dribbled out of a mouth that seemed frozen in a rictus. The black-pupilled eyes stared helplessly as the creature’s ribs gave up the struggle to keep it breathing and all of a sudden it was dead. Tom inserted a careful finger between the bars of the cage and prodded the corpse. It was warm, but every bit as rigid as Spencer’s had been.
‘Hemlock,’ said Tom and shook his head sadly.
‘Definitely hemlock,’ agreed John, looking up from his note-taking. ‘One of hemlock’s symptoms is the expanded irises - just as with belladonna. But one of the symptoms of belladonna is inability to pass urine. Hemlock, however, causes piss in abundance. Whatever herbs of mine Hal gave him to aid his sleep, it was a powerful distillation of hemlock that the murderer poured into his ear.’
‘And Hal’s herbs held him fast asleep as the hemlock did its work, said Tom. ‘So he could not run madly round his room but suddenly slow and stumble as though blind. He did vomit and may have shivered convulsively. He certainly panted and drooled. He may well have gone into convulsions - the blankets were well enough disturbed and he certainly did lose control of his bladder. Then, I assume, he slid ever deeper into a false sleep, which the Ancient Greeks called a koma I believe - and so died.’ There was a short silence as the others considered the terrible truth of his words. ‘Well,’ continued Tom after a few moments more, ‘speaking of Greeks, at least poor Spencer shared his death with Socrates. That might have been some consolation, had he known it.’
*
‘But the hemlock must have been distilled and concentrated to a terrible degree,’ John shook his head. ‘To have killed the cat so swiftly.’
‘Who would make such a horrible concoction?’ wondered Elizabeth, shaken out of her righteous rage and the only one in the room who did not know.
‘Simon Forman for one,’ answered her father shortly. ‘And if I hear that you have visited him or that rakehell poet Donne again, I will take a rod to you, girl, that will make you skip and whimper! Ask your mother if you doubt me, for I have taken one to her in the past as is a father’s right and a husband’s duty.’
Elizabeth turned on her heel at that and stormed out. The others returned to the eel stew while it was still warm, though in truth none of them had much appetite left. They ate in silence - there seemed nothing more to say. Until John started, apparently a propos of nothing, ‘I did not order him to go.’ He looked up at the others. ‘Hal,’ he explained unnecessarily. ‘He told me he planned to visit Foreman’s house and see could he recover anything Elizabeth had left there. He loved her you see and wanted to protect her. I should have stopped him, especially as he was now a witness to Will Shakespeare buying poisons and therefore likely to be asked some hard questions by the Queen’s Crowner or the Earl Marshal’s men. But I didn’t think - so I did not forbid him. He’s dead, isn’t he?’
‘Fell down those stairs, frightened by the bird which seemed demonically possessed, just as you almost did yourself,’ confirmed Tom. ‘With no-one there to catch him as Ugo and I caught you.’
‘Where is he now do you think?’
‘In the brick privy in Foreman’s garden as like as not. But as near as I can reckon from what we overheard, he won’t be there for long. Forman, Chapman and - who knows - the Earl of Essex himself seem to have other plans for him.
iii
Early afternoon next day found Tom fresh from Sabbath worship and a bite of luncheon, with belly full and soul as clean as it would ever be, strolling apparently casually along Hog Lane. He could afford his apparent nonchalance because yesterday evening’s clear weather still lingered with no sign of rain or snow returning. The day was frosty, fair enough, but even that worked in his favour by keeping the lane’s thick mud solid so that his boots weren’t even soiled. As he strolled eastward from Bishop’s Gate, north of Houndsditch and the city wall, he turned over in his mind the conversation he was likely to have when he arrived at the Yeomans’ familiar door. So deep in thought was he that he hardly registered the bustle of citizens heading the other way towards the Spital Field Butts and the Artillary Yard beyond - required by law to continue their weapons training each Sunday. As a member of the Guild of Masters of Defence, Tom was excused. It was assumed that if the Spanish did invade his mastery with his rapiers would be immediately and effectively employed without constant weekly honing. And Poley was excused because his work against the Spaniards - and indeed all the enemies of England - was on another level altogether.
With his planned conversation still unfinished in his mind, Tom turned off Hog Lane and onto the path leading to the Yeomans’ door. Three brisk raps brought Bess the serving maid. ‘Good morrow, Bess,’ he greeted her as she peered round the edge of the door. ‘I seek master Poley. Is he aloft?’ he asked. Poley’s rooms were immediately beneath the eaves - in a similar room to that in which Forman kept his black magic paraphernalia and his demon-possessed parrot. Aptly enough, thought Tom, for Poley was also a master of dark arts.
‘No, Master Musgrave,’ whispered Bess. ‘Master Poley hasn’t lain here for the best part of a week.’
‘Do you know where he is?’
‘No, Master Musgrave. My Mistress might know, but she is not to be disturbed.’
‘At prayer or Sabbath study, I expect,’ said Tom. Bess’s eyes widened and she choked on a giggle.
Then her countenance became perfectly demure; suspiciously so, thought Tom. ‘Just so, sir I’m sure,’ she said and closed the door in his face.
Tom hesitated for a moment before turning away. He had known Bess for as long as he had been visiting this house and he had never seen her behave quite like this. So, his interest piqued, he wandered off down Hog Lane as though deep in thought. He half wished he had taken to the fashion for smoking - a pipe now would explain why he lingered even though it was unusual to see anyone applying its undoubted medicinal benefits outside a tavern or smoking house. He paused, raised his foot onto a low wall and seemed to be attending to some mud clinging to his boot. He had to be careful, though. Loitering was at least frowned upon and in some areas illegal - especially on the Sabbath when so many folk had so much to do between Matins and Evensong.
*
But luckily he did not have to wait too long. Less than ten minutes after Bess shut Joan Yeomans’ door, she opened it again. Bess and her mistress swept out, dressed for a lengthy walk, laden with covered baskets whose contents were impossible even for the Master of Logic to guess with any certainty. But it looked like food and drink to Tom.
The two women marched purposefully back toward Bishopsgate Str
eet, then they turned south and hurried along it through the Bishops Gate itself. Tom followed them, unnoticed, into Gracechurch Street then on into Fish Street, crossing the City in its entirety, and so into the thinner Sunday afternoon bustle of London Bridge. He still had almost no idea where they were heading for, but he had a shrewd idea who they were planning to meet: Robert Poley. And if Poley had not slept in his own bed for a week it could only mean that he was working undercover, probably in some prison, trying to tempt his fellow inmates into indiscretions that would reveal sedition or treason and fit them for Tyburn or The Tower. Which of the nearby jails he was currently resident in, was difficult to ascertain until the women marched down off the South Wark and continued straight into The Borough without turning right into Clink Street and the Clink Gaol or left into Tooley Street and the Borough Counter. As they continued straight on, it was clear that they must be heading for the Marshalsea.
Tom followed, fascinated; his mind no longer turning over what he would say to Poley but how he would actually get to him. At last the women turned left into Angel Place and followed the edge of the churchyard behind the church of St George The Martyr until they reached the forbidding frontage of the Marshalsea. Tom paused, uncharacteristically hesitant. Should he push forward and pretend to be part of their party or should he hang back and await events?
Joan Yeomans knocked on the door and spoke to the man whose face appeared behind the grille set at head-height into it. After a moment, the door opened and the two women vanished inside. Still in a quandary, Tom hesitated - what he would say to the door keeper now all intermixed with what he wished to say to Poley. But all too soon he ran out of patience. He crossed the street and knocked on the jail’s forbidding door. After a moment the section behind the grille opened. A battered countenance with scar-thickened brows and a flattened nose appeared. ‘Yuss?’ if demanded.
‘I am come with Mistress Yeomans,’ he said. ‘I have a message for Master Poley. It is vital that I speak with him.’