Blood On the Stone

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Blood On the Stone Page 5

by Jake Lynch


  A stertorous breath at his shoulder announced Robshaw’s presence. Together, they watched Mayor Bowell lower his pendulous person to kneel down on a mat placed by the Royal coach, and offer up his gestamen of authority.

  ‘Wouldn’t think he was up such a height just an hour ago,’ the deputy said. Luke, too, was impressed at the dignified bearing the man had managed to cultivate in the time since they left him in a state of agitation at his office.

  ‘Aye, he plays his part well.’ The King and Queen received gifts from the City – a pair of gloves each, fashioned of finest sable with fringes of gold braid.

  ‘Won’t have to dirty his hands with the likes of us now, will he, Charles?’ Robshaw quipped.

  ‘Or with Parliament for much longer, probably,’ Luke replied.

  ‘How come?’

  ‘Why, given half a chance, he’d take all the money paid in taxes and duties from the whole country, and spend it as he saw fit. Or so ’tis said.’

  Frowning, Robshaw smoothed his whiskers down with his fingers, scattering crumbs from his breakfast as he did so.

  ‘And they won’t let him, them politicians?’

  ‘Not on your life! That’s what the civil war was about. But he’s forever scheming to find a way round them.’

  Presently, the Royal carriage was ready to move off, and the mayor rose and shouldered the five-foot-long silver mace. Their Majesties entered the city, to loud cheers from the loyal portion of Oxford opinion, with Captain Sutherland’s Foot Guards lining the route and watching for any signs of dissent.

  Chapter 10

  Morning at Magdalen Farm

  Emily sat on her three-legged milking stool and rested her cheek against the warm roan flank of one of the ten remaining cows. They had indeed made their own way home, and overnight, it seemed, munched sporadically on the winter fodder she had drawn from the small remaining supply. Suffused with relief at their appearance before her summons to the farmhouse, she had bitterly resolved never to dawdle over her duties again.

  ‘Good ’cess with them milchers, girl,’ Liza, her mother, said as she slipped out that morning. ‘Knowing your luck, they’ll have gone dry.’ But no, the milk squirted out as her fingers worked the teats, albeit not in great quantity.

  If only she had set off earlier to bring the beasts home! She had replayed the scene, over and over, through the night. Every time, in her mind’s eye, they quit the road just before the arrival of the cavalrymen. The late meeting with Farmer Pawling had left her in a state of righteous indignation at the rough treatment she and her charges had received. So, when she went to bed, sleep came intermittently at best. The cow she was milking stamped in protest and rolled her big eyes backwards as Emily, riled all over again as she thought about the gunshot, squeezed harder on the udder.

  ‘Sorry, my pet,’ she soothed. ‘Cush-cush-cush! There, now,’ – and the flow of milk resumed.

  She had been wide awake at first light, in her cot by the window, watching Mistress Blackbird swooping down for beakfuls of nesting materials, when she spotted Pawling’s familiar figure. Hunched in the saddle and hat pulled down against the morning chill, he was leaving the farm on his great dappled gelding. She frowned. Wasn’t her father supposed to be going to town with him? And surely it was too early to find anyone up and about? At the time, she dismissed the thought as quickly as it arrived, and turned over in search of more sleep.

  Anyway, she had made a mistake. The farmer had not apparently been departing for Oxford, for now she could hear him, back already. She broke off from her task and came to the door of the dairy to watch.

  ‘Fetch us a slice and a cup of small beer,’ he demanded of the serving girl, as his horse sidled off to a clump of long grass, and Pawling sat himself down on the low wall around the chicken coop.

  ‘Everything ready, Hopkins?’ he enquired through a mouthful of bread.

  Emily’s father hurried to saddle up the piebald nag to accompany him as arranged.

  The cattle were to be kept in for a few days, to get over their ordeal. So, by mid-morning, Emily was set to help her mother to make soap for washing themselves and their clothes, and scrubbing the iron-hooped wooden pails she used to collect the milk. They would start with bits of the dead cattle, which Caskey, the slaughterer, had returned to the farm first thing that morning.

  ‘Them there’s the kidneys, and them’s the livers,’ Liza said, removing the cloth that was covering the pile of reddish-brown offal. The daughter swallowed hard, and looked away. Still, at least it meant poor Daisy and Cassie would do them one last service. ‘We’ll each take one at a time. Pick up that other knife, look, and do as I do.’ Emily watched as she deftly cut the fat from around one of the large, yielding organs, and haltingly followed suit.

  ‘You’ve to grab it good and hard!’ the mother exclaimed, when a liver slipped from the younger woman’s grasp and slithered off the wooden board.

  As they removed the yellow tissue, they placed it in a metal pot, which Mistress Hopkins then suspended over a low flame to melt.

  ‘Go and stack the leaching barrel then,’ she instructed. Emily took up the pail of ash from the previous night’s fire and sprinkled it between layers of straw in the downward-tapered structure which stood in a corner of the farmyard, tongue protruding slightly from the corner of her mouth in concentration. When she had finished, it was time to strain the melted fat through a cheesecloth to collect the tallow. Kneeling by the fire, she held the fabric tight over another pot as her mother poured it, little by little, pressing it through with the back of a wooden spoon.

  Presently, the women were distracted by the sound of hoofbeats approaching, and went out to meet them.

  ‘Did you see the King and Queen?’ Liza wondered.

  ‘Nay! Load of fuss and bother,’ Pawling replied. The piebald horse, breathing heavily from the attempt to keep pace with the farmer’s larger mount as they trotted up the slope, slowed in relief as they reached the head of the path.

  ‘Now then, my girl,’ Emily’s father said kindly as the riders dismounted. ‘We’ve been to see Luke Sandys, and he said he’ll look into the matter of them poor cattle. That there Guardsman with his gun has done us a wrong, and no mistake.’

  ‘Aye, and with what I’ve given Sandys, that rascal won’t have much longer to do any more wrongs in this world, I can tell you,’ Pawling thundered as he stalked off into the farmyard. ‘Come, Hopkins, stable the horses and let’s set about us. Busy day.’

  ‘Right away, sir,’ the other replied, exchanging sympathetic looks with his daughter.

  Emily wore a puzzled frown as she returned to the leaching barrel. Had she heard aright? She half-heartedly shooed away old Jack, the farmyard donkey, who was taking too close an interest in the straw she’d carefully laid in. The placid creature had been both a childhood pet and a beast of burden, carrying baskets of stuff between field and farm – though now he was too frail and rheumaticky for work.

  ‘Can you understand it, Jack?’ she asked him, as the animal tilted long, threadbare ears alternately forward and back. ‘What could Farmer Pawling have given Master Sandys? And why should the shooter not be long for this world?’

  Taking up another pot from the fire, Emily trickled its contents of hot water down through the barrel, carefully positioning a large wooden bowl underneath to catch the lye, which they would then mix with the tallow.

  ‘Surely he didn’t mean to say he’d hang for it? We wouldn’t want that, would we, old lad?’ But Jack merely chewed his cud, with rhythmic, circular movements of his jaw, and gazed back at her. ‘Richard would call us soft-hearted, Jack, worrying about what’s to happen to that there cavalryman. But enough lives have been taken already, I reckon.’

  ‘Emily! Where’s that lye?’ her mother called from inside the cottage – and, switching her attention to the work, Emily gave Jack’s ears a fondle, and set the matter to one side.

  Chapter 11

  The Green Ribbon Club

  The mayor,
bailiffs and councillors were tucking in to their banquet with the King and Queen, but, to Elizabeth’s chagrin, the invitation had not been extended to constables, let alone their spouses. In reality, Luke could have pressed to be added to the guest list, and perhaps even swung a place for his wife; but he cared little for such occasions, and now – with an investigation to begin in earnest – he was relieved not to have set arrangements in train that would have kept him from making headway. Raucous laughter guided him to where his deputy was loitering with some of his cronies in a corner of the Guildhall stable yard. As Luke caught his eye, the burly constable picked up the corner of pastry he had been munching, pushed it into his mouth, wiped his hands on his breeches, and came to join him.

  ‘Where do we start, then?’ he asked. ‘’Twas a political killing, Bowell reckoned?’

  ‘Let’s hope not,’ Luke replied. ‘We could do without faction fighting on the streets of Oxford.’

  Robshaw nodded as he swallowed the last of his mouthful.

  ‘Them Green Ribbon fellers seemed dead fierce on Popery. Even more than the usual.’

  ‘Indeed. Ed told me, they’re wanting us to crack down harder, what with the Popish Plot, and such.’

  ‘Don’t make no sense to me. Left-footers round here knows their place. Not that there’s many of them left, these days.’

  ‘If we don’t find Harbord’s killer, they’ll take the blame. I’m sure the Green Ribbon men have already started.’

  *

  ‘Step’s clean,’ the deputy remarked, as the pair once again crossed the threshold of The Unicorn and Jacob’s Well. The crowd was thinner, and the conversation of a harsher tone than the previous day.

  ‘Good day to you, sirs,’ Unsworth said. ‘Licence all paid for now, Master Sandys.’

  ‘Yes, can I have a word, gentlemen, please,’ Luke said, holding up his hand for quiet in an unconscious echo of Harbord’s own gesture. ‘We are investigating the murder of Master Harbord and we need to ask you a few questions.’

  ‘That fine gentleman was martyred, sir,’ one of the Green Ribbons immediately piped up. ‘This place should be a shrine to righteousness!’ There was a buzz of acclaim.

  ‘You should be out, rounding up all the Papists in the city,’ a thin, ratty-looking character called out from his position on a bench at the back of the room, where Luke immediately noticed a rare sight indeed: the speaker’s neighbour was a black man, an African, or ‘blackamoor’. The Sandys’ old cook-maid, Joan, had long been known as ‘the only blackamoor in Oxford’. Well, no longer, it seemed.

  ‘Unsworth, you said a caller came by yesterday asking for Master Harbord,’ Luke began, before the din rose too high to make himself heard. ‘Did you see or hear the conversation between them? From what he said, Harbord didn’t seem to welcome the call.’

  ‘Well, sir, he sent him away with a flea in his ear, it seemed,’ the innkeeper volunteered, before being quieted by a frown from the first speaker, who had evidently taken on the mantle of group leadership from his late colleague.

  ‘Such a man as Bill Harbord will have no end of callers petitioning and pestering for notice or favours of all kinds. ’Tis the burden of being a public figure.’

  ‘And you are…?’ Luke enquired.

  ‘Edward Norton, MP, of Westbury in the county of Wiltshire, at your service. It’s abundantly clear, sir, surely, that this evil is yet another Popish act of roguery?’

  ‘Popery, superstition, idolatry and cruelty are entering our gates,’ the thin man declaimed, reading from a pamphlet spread out on his knees – the same pamphlet, Luke straight away realised, that he’d bought earlier, ‘and are ready to butcher our Protestant Ministers at their Divine Worship, and make Human Smithfield Sacrifice of us, our Wives and Children.’

  ‘Allow me to present our learned pamphleteer, Elkanah Settle Esquire,’ Norton said, as the general growl of approval at the inflammatory words died down, ‘the author of that and many other truths that our rulers will heed, sir, or ’twill be their ruin.’

  ‘My information, sir, is that very few Papists have been sent down by Oxford magistrates of late,’ Settle intoned nasally, as the room fell quiet. ‘Are they failing in their duty to prosecute, or are the bailiffs and constables neglecting their duty to inform? It can only be one or the other.’

  ‘You watch your mouth,’ Robshaw growled, feeling for his heavy wooden stave. In a fluid motion, Settle’s dark-skinned neighbour reached under the table and drew out a dagger, which he set down in front of him. Luke sensed that he must quickly take back control of the conversation.

  ‘Does anyone here have any actual evidence of any Roman Catholics threatening the life of Master Harbord?’ The question was greeted with an angry murmur, but no one came forward to reply.

  ‘In that case, let us all keep an open mind.’ He turned once again to the innkeeper. ‘This man who called for Harbord, what did he look like?’

  ‘He was mature in years, sir, and shabby, like, but he’d seen better days, if you get my meaning.’

  ‘What sort of terms did they part on?’ Robshaw asked.

  ‘It seemed to me the man gave Master Harbord something. He was putting a paper in his pocket, like a letter, when he came back to the bar.’ As Norton made to quieten him again, Unsworth hastily added: ‘But I was busy sirs, drawing ale for these gentlemen, so I may have been mistaken.’

  Chapter 12

  The Parliamentary Clerks

  ‘We shall have to look for that piece of paper when we get round to examining the body,’ Sandys said, as the pair quit the highly charged atmosphere of the tavern.

  ‘Office locked up?’ Robshaw asked. Luke had, through many cases, convinced him of the importance of preserving physical evidence intact, as far as possible.

  ‘Yes, I turned the key before we came out.’ The clouds chasing each other across the Oxford sky had gradually turned greyer, and a damp squall suddenly sent the foot traffic scurrying for cover. The constables made their way back up Fish Street, and now headed for shelter at the Cornmarket, where the roof had been restored with tiles after the lead of the original was melted down for bullets in the Civil War.

  ‘They seemed excited. Too much so, for my liking. What did you make of them?’ Luke asked, as they watched the rain drumming on the cobbles outside.

  ‘I was more worried about that there blackamoor,’ Robshaw replied. ‘I ain’t never seen one. Apart from your Joan, of course.’

  ‘Hired muscle, no doubt, in case the speeches are not persuasive enough by themselves.’

  ‘They know something they’re not telling,’ was Robshaw’s considered verdict, and Luke was inclined to agree.

  The brief shower abating, they cut along Brasenose Lane, between Exeter and Lincoln Colleges, and emerged presently at the back gate into the quadrangle of the Bodleian Library. Immediately, two heavily armed Royal Foot Guards challenged them to state their business.

  ‘We’ve an appointment with the Commons Clerks,’ Luke said, as he presented their letters of office. Earlier, he had sent a messenger from the Guildhall with a request for records of Harbord’s activities as an MP. The parliamentary administration services had decamped to Oxford for the duration, and were in the process of being settled into their temporary home in the Bodleian. The stenographers would have to come and go between there and the Convocation House, where the King would attend the opening of Parliament, so strict security measures were in place.

  ‘Ah,’ one of the Guards replied with a grin. ‘You want Bob Tim and Bob Sim.’

  ‘Bob Tim and Bob Sim?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  *

  Parliament’s arrival in Oxford represented a commercial bonanza. For those charged with actually running the City and the University, however, it meant extra work, bother and disruption. Obliged to follow instructions to accommodate the business of state, some officials nevertheless found or contrived covert ways to signal their disgruntlement. Staff of the Bodleian were no exception,
and, when it came to allocating a room for the parliamentary clerks, the only convenient space turned out to be a chamber normally reserved for the storage of bookbinding and restoration materials, and cleaning supplies.

  Sandys and Robshaw climbed the stone steps to these cramped quarters, only to find the landing partially blocked with stacks of files.

  ‘Hulloo?’ Robshaw called out. From behind the stacks, a head popped out, the pink plumpish face bearing a determinedly jolly expression, surmounted by a grey periwig.

  ‘Robert Timpson, sirs, at your service.’ At this, a second face, thinner and comparatively sallow, though under an identical wig, just as suddenly materialised in the gap on the opposite side of the tallest stack from the first.

  ‘Robert Simkins, at your service, sirs,’ this one said.

  ‘Good day to you gentlemen,’ Luke replied, presenting their credentials once again. ‘We are interested in any records you may have pertaining to the late William Harbord, MP. We’re investigating his murder, last night here in Oxford.’

  ‘Yes sir, we received your note…’ Timpson began, but Simkins cut in to finish his sentence:

  ‘…and we’ve been hunting high and low ever since.’ Luke began to realise why the Guards had chuckled at the mention of the two clerks.

 

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