The Tainted Relic

by The Medieval Murderers

  Jack and Abel turned to me. This public hearing seemed a slightly irregular way of going about evidence-gathering but I supposed that the Bartholomew Fair court was a more provisional affair, one in which matters had to be settled quickly. As briefly as I could, I outlined the circumstances that had brought the three of us to the fair, my commission from WS, the conversation with the bookseller, the arrangement to return when he’d found the item in question, our discovery of Hatch’s body. The elderly clerk took notes of all this, snuffling and clearing his throat in a distracting way.

  The only details I omitted were probably the most important ones, to do with the relic. Even though the theft of the fragment provided a motive for murder I didn’t want to complicate matters. As it turned out, not mentioning this was a mistake since Farnaby already knew of it.

  ‘Master Hatch showed you nothing else?’ he said.

  ‘I am not sure what you mean, sir,’ I replied.

  ‘There was no other item of value?’

  ‘I do not recall so.’

  ‘Yet you are carrying four pounds in your purse, are you not? As if you came here with the where-withal to purchase something of value.’

  ‘That was the sum which Master Shakespeare had given me to buy back his foul papers.’

  ‘The money was not to buy a piece of wood which purported to come from the cross of our Lord and which is no longer to be found anywhere on Master Hatch’s premises?’

  There was a gasp from someone in the makeshift court at this. I felt myself grow red like a child.

  ‘Wood from the cross?’

  ‘Just so. Did Master Hatch mention such an item?’

  ‘He may have done. I do not take much account of such popish gewgaws but yes, I think he did mention it–now I come to think of it, sir.’

  ‘…now you come to think of it, Master Revill. Yet we have testimony that Ulysses Hatch intended to sell this “popish gewgaw”, as you call it, and sell it to the players.’

  ‘Not to us, sir,’ I said, realizing that such testimony could only have come from Wapping Doll. ‘As I said, my business at the fair was simply to buy the foul papers of an early play by William Shakespeare. My friends can confirm this.’

  Jack and Abel nodded away but Farnaby no longer seemed very interested.

  I became conscious of the wad of papers stowed under my shirt. I rather wished now that I had let them lie under Hatch’s body. The Justice’s words also cleared up the mystery of why Tom Gally was at the fair. Hatch had intended to sell the ‘item’ to the players, as reported to Farnaby by Wapping Doll. So Gally had not come in pursuit of the Domitian text after all, was perhaps unaware of it. Instead he was on commission from Henslowe to purchase the fragment of the cross. I was considering whether I should name Master Gally when Farnaby put another question to me.

  ‘Did Master Hatch show you a pistol when you were in his tent on the first occasion?’

  ‘Yes, sir. He kept it primed…’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the world is full of rogues. They were his words.’

  ‘He’s right enough there,’ said Justice Farnaby. ‘This is the pistol?’

  With a flourish he produced the weapon from the ground beside his chair. It had a bulbous handle and a blunt muzzle. I hadn’t noticed it before. Perhaps Farnaby was intending to shock me into a display of guilt.

  ‘I…I think so, sir,’ I said. ‘It’s a snaphaunce.’

  ‘Ah, you know your weapons, Master Revill,’ said the Justice.

  Never handled one, I wanted to say, but it was too late now. I realized that, while the three of us had been stuck in our cell, there’d been plenty of coming and going between the court and the dead man’s tent, as well as the taking of witness statements. None of this put us in a good light.

  ‘What happened to the bird?’ said Farnaby.

  The question, coming abruptly, took me by surprise.

  ‘You mean the raven?’

  ‘Yes. I have testimony that Hatch kept a bird which went by the name of Hold-fast.’

  ‘I do not know what happened to it, sir. The raven was in the tent earlier. When I returned with my friends he had gone. Perhaps he took fright, with his master dead.’

  There was a sob from the sidelines. Wapping Doll had her hands to her face in grief.

  ‘Very well,’ said Farnaby. ‘Have you two associates of Master Revill anything to add to his story?’

  When Jack and Abel indicated that they hadn’t, Farnaby said, ‘This is enough for the present. You may go.’

  This sudden dismissal was surprising, but I caught a glance that passed from the Justice to one of the constables. I wondered just how far we would be permitted to go. Outside St Bartholomew’s Priory, we debated what to do next. It was afternoon by now. The sun hung in the sky, hot and heavy. Earlier I’d felt hungry, but now I had no appetite left. Abel was for quitting St Bartholomew’s Fair and the Smithfield neighbourhood straight away, but Jack said doing that would make us look like guilty men. Out of the corner of my vision I caught sight of one of the beetle-browed constables, undoubtedly ordered by Farnaby to keep an eye on us.

  I gestured over my shoulder.

  ‘We’ve got Gog or Magog on our tail,’ I said.

  ‘Gog? Magog?’ said Jack.

  ‘My name for the constables,’ I said. ‘Those hulking fellows who took us in just now. They look like the wooden statues outside the Guildhall, big and ugly brutes.’

  Jack looked dubiously at me.

  ‘They didn’t find the box or the glass vial or the piece of the cross when they searched us, so they think we must have deposited them somewhere about the fair. They’re waiting to see if we go in search of them.’

  ‘As I said, we should get out now,’ said Abel.

  ‘No we shouldn’t,’ I said. ‘Look over there. On second thoughts, don’t look. Pretend to talk instead.’

  In the shadow of the priory, half hidden behind a crumbling buttress, stood two men. Like the seasoned professionals they were, my friends didn’t falter but at once entered into an energetic ‘conversation’ of the sort we often pretended to have on the Globe stage. Meanwhile, between their shoulders, I watched Ben Nightingale the ballad singer and his accomplice, the little man with the rustic hat who went by the name of Peter Perkin. They must have thought themselves quite unobserved for they were occupied with their business. Their real business, which was the lifting of purses and the division of the spoils. I’d no doubt that was what they were doing now.

  The ballad singer had laid aside his lute in favour of his loot, you might say. In his outspread palm he was counting out some items that Perkin had just spilled into it, coins or trinkets presumably, the fruit of the latter’s nipping and foisting. Meantime Perkin had picked up Nightingale’s lute and was fiddling with it. I wondered that they were so bold to do this out in the open and close to Pie-Powder Court, but they were in a secluded spot and the day’s successful labour had perhaps made them careless.

  But it wasn’t the sight of a couple of thieves counting out their money which interested me. Rather, it was the fact that Perkin, having put down the singer’s lute, had suddenly produced from somewhere about his person the wooden box that I’d last seen in Ulysses Hatch’s tent. The box with the lid and the star-shaped pattern. The box that had contained the fragment of the cross. So Peter Perkin had been the thief all along! And not just the thief but the murderer too, for whoever had stolen the cross fragment had surely shot Hatch into the bargain. Despite Abel’s earlier claim, Perkin the cutpurse was capable of murder after all.

  As I watched surreptitiously, Perkin drew the box out into the open and showed it to Nightingale, at the same time shaking his head. As if to prove the honesty of his gesture, he opened the box and held it upside down. Nothing fell out. It was truly empty. Perkin said something else and Nightingale replied. The stiff postures of each man indicated an imminent argument.

  If the two men hadn’t been so wrapped up in their dialogue the
y might have noticed me. As it was, Nightingale uttered some more sharp words–which weren’t audible–and shook his head so violently that his little red cap almost fell off. For answer Perkin passed him the box. Go on, his whole manner said, if you don’t believe me, take a look for yourself. There’s nothing inside, it’s truly empty.

  The ballad singer seized the box and raised it to his eyes as if to give it further scrutiny. Perkin grew more determined to make his point, and he gesticulated and flapped his arms about. Nightingale’s mouth gaped, giving a good impression of surprise or disbelief. I couldn’t understand what they were on about. Once again the singer examined the interior of the box. Then he looked over the rim and saw me staring at him. And immediately his eyes flicked over my shoulder and I saw them widen in surprise or fear. I glanced round. Approaching us was the constable whom I’d christened Gog (or maybe it was Magog).

  After that a couple of things happened simultaneously.

  I decided that the only way to prove my–or our–absolute innocence in the matter of Hatch’s murder was to lay hands on Peter Perkin the cutpurse and Ben Nightingale the ballad singer and on the box, which, empty or not, would be proof of their complicity in theft. I say ‘decided’ but of course it was an instinctive move. Yelling something to my friends, I started off towards the shadowy spot where the two men were standing.

  But, already alarmed by the appearance of Magog (or Gog), Nightingale snatched up his lute with one hand and, still holding on to the wooden box with the other, slipped round the buttress and took to his heels. His accomplice was a second or so behind him, but he too was away before I got within twenty yards.

  Nightingale and Perkin would have done better to have stood still and tried to brazen it out. Running was a sign of guilt. And even someone as dense as the constable could react to a running man, as a hound reacts to a hare. I sensed rather than saw him lumbering after us.

  The ballad singer and the cutpurse would also have done better to separate so as to divide pursuit, but Perkin stuck close to Nightingale’s track. The priory lay on the north side of Smithfield and the edge of the Bartholomew ground. Indeed, this point really marked the ragged fringe of London. There were a few people about but most of the crowd was still at the heart of the fair.

  Given their head start and likely practice in running, it was quite possible that the thieves might have outpaced us and made their getaway among the lanes and ditches that fanned out into the open fields of Hoxton or Islington. But suddenly, from behind the wall of an outbuilding, there sprang the other constable, Gog (or Magog). Whether he acted by instinct or whether he was more quick-thinking than I’d credited either of them with being, he stuck out his long staff so that it tangled up in Ben Nightingale’s legs. The singer, impeded by what he was carrying, stumbled and fell. His red cap flew off while his lute somersaulted into the air before crashing to the ground with an unmusical clatter. Then the constable gave him a clout over the head.

  Perkin the cutpurse almost collided with his fallen companion, although he jumped to one side at the last moment and drew off to the left. But he’d lost precious seconds by the manoeuvre and, with four individuals on his tail, he didn’t stand much of a chance. Small fellow that he was, he was soon overwhelmed by all our attentions.

  I left it to the others to deal with Perkin and went in search of the box, which Nightingale had also dropped as he fell. I found it on its side a few yards off. It wasn’t quite empty for, wedged in a corner, was the strip of parchment that Ulysses Hatch had claimed showed the authenticity of the fragment of the cross. The parchment was so faded, however, and the words so hard to decipher, that, by itself, this would prove little. Nevertheless, I carefully nestled the box under my arm and joined the others. Ben Nightingale was on his feet but looked as though he scarcely knew where he was–or indeed who he was. He was holding his bare head where the constable had thwacked it.

  Gog and Magog looked gratified to have apprehended two more villains who had demonstrated their turpitude by fleeing. When I indicated that we should all return to Pie-Powder Court and Justice Farnaby, they seemed happy enough to fall in with the idea. On our way there, I noticed Abel pick up Nightingale’s fractured lute. For his part, the singer was still not sure what was going on and staggered forward clutching his head. Peter Perkin, meanwhile, looked crestfallen.

  ‘This is the singer’s means of trade,’ said Abel, cradling the lute in his arms. The neck of the instrument was splintered and the strings tangled.

  ‘Singer? He’s a thief–or worse,’ I said, full of righteousness that we had tracked down the individuals responsible for Hatch’s demise.

  ‘It will be a long time before he makes enough money to buy another of these,’ said Abel, gazing on the lute as though it were a sickly baby.

  ‘Then he can always steal one,’ I said, wondering at Abel’s softness. I suppose it was because he had once earned his living by trickery that he had a sneaking sympathy with unreformed cony-catchers.

  We returned to the priory and to the hall where Justice Farnaby was still sitting on his oak chair, as if waiting for more malefactors to be produced. I was eager to explain that we’d come back with proof, of a sort, as to the real identity of the thieves and probable murderers of Ulysses Hatch. Wapping Doll was still there. To her especially I was eager to show that I was no murderer. I handed over the box to the Justice, describing how this was the very object I’d first seen in Hatch’s hands and then in Perkin’s possession before it was seized by Nightingale. The cutpurse looked indignant but it was for form’s sake only. Gog and Magog could add their testimony to the effect that I was telling the truth, I said, appealing to the constables.

  Farnaby opened the box and took out the fragile strip of parchment. He glanced at it for an instant then shut the box once more. He looked at Nightingale, who was still clutching his battered noddle, and at Perkin. He considered, for a long period he considered.

  ‘Wait in there with your friends, Master Revill,’ he said, gesturing towards a door at the side of the hall. ‘Let me hear what these individuals have to say for themselves.’

  Jack and Abel and I filed into a room that must have been the kitchen to the refectory. There was an open fireplace with a roasting-spit operated by a small treadmill. A dog would have turned the treadmill in the monks’ time. The equipment was old and rusted. The kitchen door was firmly closed on us. Again, if we weren’t quite prisoners we weren’t free men either. My confidence that justice was about to be done dwindled slightly.

  ‘Where’s this bit of the “true” cross, then?’ said Jack. ‘All that Perkin had was the box which you said it was in.’

  ‘That’s only what he showed Nightingale, the empty box,’ I said. ‘Most likely he’d already taken it for himself. Maybe he was planning to sell it on his own account.’

  ‘If it ever existed,’ said Jack. In his irritation he tried to spin the treadmill, which was connected to the spit by a sagging chain. It creaked like some ancient implement of torture.

  ‘I saw it, I tell you, I saw it in Ulysses Hatch’s own hands.’

  ‘Well, he can’t testify any longer, can he? And now it’s vanished into thin air.’

  ‘Nick’s not the only one to know of it,’ said Abel, coming to my rescue. ‘Justice Farnaby mentioned it. Someone must have informed him.’

  ‘Wapping Doll,’ I said. ‘She knew about the cross, said it brought her out in goose bumps.’

  ‘Then her bumps can be brought in evidence,’ said Jack. ‘Until such time we shall have to say that the cross has gone.’

  ‘Perhaps this can be repaired,’ said Abel, changing the subject. ‘I’m not an expert, mind…’

  Abel was still holding Nightingale’s damaged lute. And, watching him, an ingenious idea flashed into my mind. I recalled the scene of the two thieves standing in the shadow of the buttress. The way in which Perkin had been fiddling with the instrument while his friend was counting out the coins in his hand. Suppose that Perkin had got
the bit of sacred wood after all and did plan to keep it for himself. Suppose the plan had come to him at the very instant the two men were counting out their money in the shade of the buttress. Perkin is holding the wooden box containing the item. He’s about to surrender it to the singer when greed gets the better of him. He palms the glass vial and, almost before he’s aware of what he’s doing, slips it into a convenient hiding place instead of handing it over. Then he shows Nightingale the empty box, pretending ignorance of its contents. Meantime the glass vial and the relic are somewhere else altogether.

  ‘Give me the lute, Abel. I’ve got an idea.’

  Abel passed me the broken instrument. The neck was cracked and splintered and some of the strings had snapped. I shook the thing. Something rattled within. I dug my hand through the sound-hole and rummaged about the interior of the lute. With mounting certainty, I grasped hold of an elongated object. It didn’t feel like glass but wood. Too late I remembered Ulysses Hatch’s warning, They say that to touch it is death. But I’d already seized the wooden piece and was easing it out of the sound-hole. The thrill of being proved right banished fears of an old wives’ curse. Like a magician, I uncurled my palm and showed Jack and Abel what it contained.

  ‘See! I told you!’

  ‘Yes, I see it,’ said Jack. ‘So what?’

  Only now did I glance down at the item in my palm. It was a shaped sliver of wood all right, but it wasn’t a piece of the True Cross. For one thing, the wood was new and unscarred.

  ‘That is a sound-post, Nick,’ said Abel. ‘Every lute has them. They’re put inside to strengthen the frame.’

  ‘So what exactly was your idea, Nicholas?’ said Jack. ‘That the cutpurse might have slipped what you’re searching for inside the lute?’

  ‘Stranger things have happened,’ I said.

  I could see from the expression on Jack’s face that he was undecided whether to laugh or curl his lip in scorn. Abel merely looked baffled.

  Luckily, at that moment the kitchen door opened and once again Gog (or Magog) ushered us into Justice Farnaby’s presence. The scene was much as we’d left it. Peter Perkin, still crestfallen, stood before the oak chair. Ben Nightingale was sitting on a bench, looking dazed. The aged clerk’s pen was poised above a pile of paper. The only change was in the expression on Farnaby’s face. Instead of looking grave and precise, he looked rather as Jack had done just now, somewhere between amused and scornful.