Blood On the Stone

by Jake Lynch

  The master mason was filling in time between deliveries of stone by instructing Richard in some of the finer techniques of his trade, but the apprentice might be released to look round the market for an hour or two.

  ‘Maybe see you there, then,’ she’d said casually, as they parted the previous afternoon. ‘Aye – maybe,’ her lover had grinned. So, today she put on her best bonnet – somewhat old and worn now, as it had been her mother’s, but of excellent quality, with bobbin lace decoration – and a gown with the seams discreetly let out by a thumb’s breadth either side. She settled herself carefully against the side of the cart to avoid creasing it.

  Leaving the farm, they turned right at the fork in the lane towards Oxford. To the left lay the path to the London road, which Emily registered with a small involuntary shudder. The cart then rolled and jolted along the causeway across the Marston meads, as Peasmoor Brook chuntered on through its loquacious shallows alongside, and was nearly at the city wall when Farmer Pawling trotted up behind them on his grey gelding.

  ‘Mind you get best prices for them goods, Mistress Hopkins!’ he called out jovially, raising his hat as he overtook them. ‘I’ll see you in the market, by and by.’

  On market days, Pawling would call in at his old mercer’s shop on the High Street. The University authorities had ‘discommoned’ him as a supplier when he muscled in on their exclusive right to patrol the streets by night and enforce the curfew. Now, the business was recovering, having apparently passed to Pawling’s apprentice, Thomas Coombes – though he was still, in fact, pocketing the proceeds. The women watched the tall, erect figure on the dappled horse as it dwindled into the distance.

  ‘He looks quite the dand,’ Emily remarked.

  ‘As well he might,’ Liza snorted. ‘He’ll be picking up his money from Master Coombes on the way into town.’

  *

  Haunches of mutton and pork were suspended in approximate order of size from the rails across the top of the stalls; there were coneys, splayed on the wooden benches, and geese, whose long, lifeless necks lolled over the sides, as the women picked their way along the shambles on Queen Street. Liza had strung the chickens together in braces, and together they carried them through the already teeming crowd with a ‘’scuse-me’ here and a ‘begging-your-pardon’ there – until they reached Master Bulstrode’s stall.

  ‘Good day to you, ladies,’ the ruddy-faced butcher called out. ‘Pleasant day for it.’

  Emily was glad of the fresh breeze that carried away the pungent odour of the blood and offal the men sluiced into the channel running down the centre of the roadway, when they’d prepared the meat for their customers.

  She had tagged along many times on this errand over the years, but now she was observing the transactions of adult life with renewed interest. Bulstrode had customers waiting, and his apprentice boy was serving them all very slowly, as he strove to avoid making mistakes. The master moved to the side of the stall to deal with Mistress Hopkins in person, keeping a nervous eye on the purchases already under way.

  ‘Thruppence a pair – best price,’ he pronounced, with an air of finality.

  ‘Now, Master Bulstrode, we’ve knowed each other a long time, and you know you won’t see better birds than these in a month of Sundays.’

  ‘One and six the lot then?’ She went to reply, then paused, calculating.

  ‘Why, ’tis the same amount, for twelve birds! Are you trying to catch me for a coney?’

  There was a twinkle in her eye, for this was a ritual long established between them.

  ‘Very well then, Mistress Hopkins, seeing as how ’tis you, and them birds do look plim, I must say… how about fourpence a pair?’

  ‘Done.’

  Delving under his blood-spattered apron, the butcher quickly counted out two shillings, which Liza slipped into a recess of her bag. ‘Thank you kindly, Master B,’ she said, smiling as they bade farewell.

  Chapter 20

  A Manhunt Begins

  Luke took the sketch and headed off with Robshaw up Fish Street. Apart from the Colonel’s aide-de-camp, Ed was the only member of the Horse Guards in Oxford that day to be wearing full uniform – calculated by the brothers as likely to induce compliance from Gregory in his arrest. By the time they set off, another constable, Tim Blount, had reported for duty at the Guildhall, so Luke paired his brother with the new arrival. Blount was serving his six-month before resuming trade as a blacksmith. They would head up Cornmarket Street while Luke and Robshaw peeled off along the High, looking inside the inns, taverns and coffeehouses as they reached them. Having checked all such premises on their allotted route, the two City men walked back towards the market, looking left and right as they went; but the crowd was thickening, and the task felt hopeless.

  ‘It’ll just be dumb luck if we see him in this lot,’ Luke said. ‘I’ve got an idea: come on.’ He struck out briskly towards the City church of St Martin’s at Carfax, on the corner of Queen Street, with Robshaw scurrying to keep pace. Luke knocked loudly on the door, then again when there was no answer. ‘I know you’re in there, Wheaton – open up.’

  ‘Patience is a virtue, master, patience is a virtue. Thus saith the Lord,’ a voice wheezed from within, accompanied by a jangling of keys – and the door finally opened, albeit only a crack. ‘Church is closed, Master Sandys. Can’t be too careful, what with these London types around, and with it being market day an’ all.’

  ‘We need to get to the top of your tower,’ Luke said, without ceremony. A practised frown settled on the verger’s features.

  ‘I shall have to ask the Rector, sir, about that. Come back later.’

  ‘No, this can’t wait. We’re on the trail of a man wanted for murder.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know what his Reverence would say to that. I never heard of such a thing.’

  ‘Very well, fetch the Reverend Duckworth. I’ve been meaning to have a word with him since I caught you selling the “healing water of St Frideswide” last year. Penny a bottle, wasn’t it? I’m told “his Reverence” takes a dim view of simony.’

  ‘Come to think of it, I might have the key to the tower on this here bunch,’ Wheaton said, hurriedly pulling the door ajar.

  Once inside, Luke was gratified to find his hunch was correct: the scaffolding was indeed still in place from the latest adjustment to St Martin’s new bells, commissioned by Richard Duckworth, the rector, who was an expert campanologist. He’d ordered an extra bell, to create a set of six, the previous year, and their ringing combinations and sequences were generally accounted as being among the wonders of the age. Robshaw protested mildly as they started to climb, but found his head for heights from the midpoint as they reached the top of the wooden apparatus and stepped out on to a broad landing, through which the bell-ropes passed by means of small round holes, then resumed the ascent up some sturdy stone steps. At the top, some seventy-five feet up, they paused for breath and drank in the cruciform city view: to the east, the spires of All Saints and Saint Mary the Virgin, with its pink flush of almond blossom at street level; the Castle and Castle Mound to the west; Christ Church Cathedral to the south; and St Michael’s church at the North Gate, along Cornmarket Street. ‘If he sticks his nose out, we’ll see him from here,’ the deputy said, gazing downwards at the market area and its throng of comers and goers.

  Chapter 21

  A Game of Cup and Ball

  At the cheesemonger’s, the Magdalen Farm produce fetched, as Mistress Hopkins said, ‘a pretty penny’ – in fact, fully fifteen shillings. Emily flushed with pride to be introduced, even in jocular fashion, as ‘our new head cheesemaker’, and the women came away well satisfied with their morning’s bargaining. Emily’s senses filled with the more agreeable experiences of market day. The melodious flageolet player stood by the roadside and fixed passers-by with beseeching eyes for coin, competing with the cries of merchants’ apprentices: ‘What d’ye lack, sirs?’

  There were fishmongers, with shoals of silver flanks g
listening in the late-morning sun, while other stalls offered dried figs and quinces, cinnamon and black peppercorns. At one or two, there were even some of the new ingredients now beginning to find their way to England from the Orient: nutmeg and cloves, and earthenware jars of ground garam masala. One day soon, she would be purchasing market goods for her own household: a realisation that thrilled and alarmed her in equal measure. What would garam masala taste like, in a bowl of pottage? Or should it be tried first in porridge? Aye – that’d be the plan.

  Looking around, Emily could suddenly no longer see her mother. No matter: she would simply head back to the stable yard behind The Mitre, where they had left the horse and cart, and wait there. Master Ingram, the ostler, an old friend of her father who had a daughter of about her own age, would let her sit in his comfortable chair. Just then, however, she glimpsed from behind the longed-for silhouette in the middle distance: Richard. It must be him: at his side she identified his friend Paul, who was apprenticed to another mason engaged on a college building project nearby, and also therefore subject to the vagaries of stone supplies. They’d evidently been given time off together.

  She was forming a call of greeting when the words suddenly died on her lips. For as the pair made their way down Fish Street, two older men who walked in front of them turned and gestured for them to follow, turning left into Blue Boar Street. And she recognised one of them, she was sure. Not in uniform this time, but that facial hair was unmistakable: it was none other than the Guardsman whose gunshot had stampeded her cattle. What had Farmer Pawling called him? A ‘rogue and a rascal’!

  Emily’s head was spinning. Shouldn’t she report this sighting to someone? Her father had said Luke Sandys would take up the matter, and Pawling implied the man was to be severely punished. And yet here he was in plain sight, with her Richard. As she looked around for a constable, however, she saw none – and the scurrying passers-by all seemed so preoccupied with their own affairs, there was no ready opening to approach any of them. Conflicting impulses led Emily to a rapid resolve: she would follow the four men herself, but at a safe distance. She must know what was afoot, but she would rather avoid another personal encounter with the soldier, even with Richard there. Hitching up the sides of her gown, she fairly trotted down Fish Street, attempting to catch up, heart in her mouth at the combination of curiosity and peril that drew her onwards.

  As she neared The Bear Inn, she saw them, seated around a table in a quiet corner of the courtyard. Drinking would begin in earnest later, when market business was done, but for now the crowd back here was thin, and they had the space to themselves. Moving quickly to avoid being spotted, Emily dodged into the back end of an alleyway belonging to another inn, The Chequers – a long, narrow establishment which fronted on to the High Street – and positioned herself to peer unobtrusively round the corner. However, she need not have worried unduly: the men seemed intent on the activity in front of them.

  With his bandaged right hand, the Guardsman set out three upturned wooden cups on the table, then held up a small ball to show Richard, who nodded as if in approval. This he placed under one of the cups, and proceeded to slide them around the table; taking the leftmost, switching it with the one in the centre, then moving the rightmost across to the other side, and repeating these actions several times. He then stopped, and motioned to Richard to take his pick. Emily watched with bated breath as her fiancé stared long and hard at the cups, and eventually tapped one of them with his index finger. The Guardsman lifted it to reveal the ball underneath, whereupon Paul clapped his friend on the back; the older man raised his shapeless grey hat and offered a handshake by way of congratulation, and the Guardsman took a coin from his purse, kissed it and handed it to Richard.

  The apprentices started to rise from their chairs as if to leave, but Grey-hat gestured for them to sit back down. There was to be another game, apparently for higher stakes: Richard drew back out the coin he’d won, along with another from his pocket. Emily saw the silver glint as he set it down. It must be a whole shilling. The same sequence unfolded, only this time, as the shuffling of wooden cups was about to begin, Grey-hat was suddenly afflicted by a cacophonous and pitiable fit of coughing. The younger men looked round in concern, and, while they were momentarily distracted, Emily clearly saw the seated Guardsman lift one of the cups, quickly remove the ball and place it in his pocket.

  Having ascertained that Grey-hat was recovering, the men returned their attention to the table. She wanted to cry out, ‘No, Richard! He’s cheating!’, but – having secreted herself to watch them – she felt she must stay hidden. So, she was forced to watch in miserable silence as her lover scrutinised the three upturned cups, knowing what he evidently did not suspect – that his chances of winning were precisely nil.

  On the disappointing outcome to the second game, copious commiserations were offered to Richard, along with the chance to win his money back, but this time the two apprentices were determined to leave, and duly did so, disappearing up Bear Lane towards the High Street. The two older men rose as well, and Emily’s heart skipped a beat on seeing them walk towards her hiding place. Before they reached her, however, they turned sharp right up another narrow alleyway, Wheatsheaf Yard, and – after waiting for what seemed like an agonisingly long interval, but was in fact the shortest time she dared allow, to make sure they would not return – she emerged, relieved at having escaped discovery but suffused with righteous indignation on Richard’s behalf. She set off as fast as her by now rather shaky legs would carry her around the inn and up Bear Lane, intending to find him and reveal how he’d been duped.

  Chapter 22

  Paths Converging

  On the top of Carfax tower, Robshaw at that moment clutched Luke’s shoulder and exclaimed: ‘Look there! That feller yonder, by the end of Wheatsheaf Yard, on the High. Is that our man?’

  Luke shaded his eyes with cupped hands, and followed the direction in which his deputy was pointing. Two men stood at the edge of the great thoroughfare, one bare-headed and the other wearing a grey hat of indeterminate shape. They first looked up the street, then down – and, on a brief exchange of words, disappeared down Bear Lane. Even from a distance of a hundred yards or so, and their high elevation, the likeness of their sketch to the sullen set of the bare-headed man’s face, with its dark moustache and beard, was noteworthy. Luke could even just about make out that his right hand was bandaged.

  ‘It might be, Robshaw,’ he said, excited. ‘It might very well.’

  They took the stone steps two at a time, heads inclined to avoid bumping them on the underside of the spiralling; half-clambered, half-slid down the scaffolding, then, having passed a bewildered Wheaton at high speed, jogged off in the direction of the High and the entrance to Bear Lane. As they wove in and out of the market crowd, Luke spotted Paul and Richard.

  ‘Bourke! Come with us,’ he panted.

  ‘But I’m not on duty, Master Sandys,’ the apprentice protested.

  ‘No matter, it’s an emergency. You’re sworn in, so you can make an arrest. Come.’ And, with that, the younger man had no option but to tag along behind the two senior constables.

  *

  There was a slight kink about a third of the way up Bear Lane, formed by the jutting-out walls of adjoining buildings. Just as Emily made her way around this obstacle on her right, she almost ran straight into two pedestrians coming the other way: one bare-headed man, and another wearing a distinctive grey hat. Her soft little ‘Oh’ on recognising them scarce did justice to the seething admixture of recognition, shock, fear and outrage she felt inside.

  ‘Whoa!’ Gregory exclaimed, as they disentangled themselves. His face changed as he stepped back to a distance enabling him to have a proper look at her. ‘Why, if it isn’t the young cowherd from the London road? I never forget a face. You’ve got me in trouble with my Colonel, missy. What d’you think, Ladlow? ’Tis a pretty chance indeed, to have borne this into my way.’

  ‘Aye – pretty,’ Grey-h
at leered unpleasantly.

  ‘Now, girls who get gentlemen in trouble with their Colonel don’t know their place. And girls who don’t know their place need to be taught a lesson,’ Gregory continued.

  In panic, Emily looked up and down the lane, but, the three of them aside, it was empty of people.

  ‘There’s no one to run to here, missy.’

  ‘’Tain’t just your Colonel what you’re in trouble with,’ she said tremulously, finally finding her voice. ‘Luke Sandys is after you an’ all. He’s a City constable.’

  ‘D’you hear that Ladlow? A City constable, indeed!’ the man taunted. ‘Well, the City can’t touch us. Discipline is for the regiment. And now I’m to have my wages docked for a ‘Conduct Prejudicial’, all because you came along with those beasts at the wrong time.’ He half-turned his head towards his companion, swivelling his eyes to keep them fixed on Emily’s face. ‘How do I feel about that, Ladlow?’

  ‘You ain’t happy, George.’

  ‘You’ve hit the nail on the head there, my friend. I ain’t happy. Not happy at all.’

  Emily could keep it in no longer.

  ‘And you was cheating at that game with the cups and the ball. I saw you.’ Straight away she would have bitten off her tongue, if in doing so she could take the words back. Gregory’s face, up to now darkly sardonic, set into a tempestuous, threatening scowl.

  ‘I’ll decide what you did and didn’t see, you brazen-faced hussy,’ he growled. ‘Spy on me, would you? You’re coming with us.’ With that, he seized Emily by one arm, roughly spun her round and clamped his own arm tightly around her waist, then began marching her back down Bear Lane whence she had come, his companion loping alongside. ‘Don’t even think of crying out. What’ll happen if she cries out, Ladlow?’