The Bartholomew Fair Murders

by Leonard Tourney

  “Good day, Matthew! And Joan, God save you.”

  “God save your honors,” replied Matthew, bowing to the stout man and his drab-suited companion. These Joan surmised, since no introductions followed, were Justice Baynard, of the famous Court of Pie-powders, and his friend Thomas Millcock, the celebrated physician of whom Rathbone had spoken to Matthew. Both men regarded the clothier and his wife with a condescending air. Justice Baynard said, “You again, Mr. Stock?”

  “Again, Mr. Justice,” answered Matthew politely but firmly. Joan took an instant dislike to the haughty magistrate. “I’m come on Ned’s invitation,” Matthew continued with easy as-surance. “If it pleases you.”

  “I cannot say it does, sir,” said Baynard stiffly. “Yet if it be Mr. Babcock’s pleasure, I will not deny you a place here. Pray keep quiet, however. This is the Queen’s business we’re em-barked on.”

  Matthew made another low bow but said nothing more. The conversation that had been in progress at their arrival now re-sumed. Millcock, the physician, did the talking. He explained that the satchel he carried was full of instruments of his profession, instruments that he had earlier used that morning to examine the remains of the victim. From his examination, he declared the foot and ankle to have been that of a man in his prime, say twenty-five to thirty, with reddish hair and a height somewhat between five and a half and six feet. A poor man, he said, continuing his observations, as the quality of his shoe and stocking indicated. About the identity of the victim, Millcock could say no more, except that certain incriminating evidence had been found on the sole of the shoe.

  “And what evidence might that be?” asked Babcock in a concerned voice.

  “Excrementum ursuii,” entoned the learned man. “In plain English, bear shit.”

  “All that proves is that the dead man was careless in his footing,” remarked Crisp.

  “More, sir,” said the sergeant, addressing the bearward who had just spoken. “It means that your precious Samson ate him, for how else would he have trod upon the animal’s voidings?”

  “As easy as yourself,” said Babcock, “for there are traces of it on all this ground. Besides,” he continued, addressing the phy* sician, “how can you say it is the excrement of a bear and not of some other beast?”

  The illustrious physician cast Babcock a disdainful look and said, “I examined it most carefully, I assure you. The residue is from the bear; the properties of the excrement match. The facts admit no other explanation. The dead man was only recently in the company of a bear.”

  “A bear, not that bear,” reasoned Babcock. “We have come full circle again. To say a bear killed the man is not to say Samson did it.”

  Both the physician and the Clerk of the Fair conceded that that was true by order of logic.

  Grotwell said he was confident further evidence could be had if only the bear pit were inspected.

  “And for that reason we are met here,” said Justice Baynard. “Mr. Babcock, lead the way. We shall want to see everything— the accused bear, his quarters, everything.”

  Babcock bowed respectfully to the magistrate and led the way into the pit. Matthew and Joan followed.

  While the Stocks waited with the two bearwards, the Justice, the physician, the Clerk, and the sheriff spread out and searched the compound. This inspection was thorough, but nothing was found. Then they all went into the tent, where they encountered the bearward’s helper feeding the bear. Joan, who had thought in the worst of her fears that the young man might have been the victim, was pleased to see him hale and hearty. She smiled and nodded to him as she entered and he smiled back and continued to toss to the bear great globs of bloody flesh that the bear was making quick work of, much to the disgust of the great physician and the Justice. Both men commented on the bear’s appetite.

  “It’s his regular breakfast,” explained Babcock defensively. “He eats twice a day, three times if he is to fight. ”

  “He could kill a man and eat him too in less time than it takes to wring a chicken’s neck and pluck it naked,” said Justice Baynard.

  “He’s no killer of men,” Crisp protested.

  They watched the bear devour the last morsels of his break' fast, then beg for more. Blood dripped from his savage jaws. His appetite seemed insatiable. The bottom of his cage was littered with bloody bones.

  When he saw that he would get no more, Samson rocked back on his shaggy bottom and regarded the men and the woman with his tiny black eyes.

  The physician said he had seen enough. He said that the guilt of the bear was certainly within the realm of possibility.

  “Realm of possibility /” exclaimed the Justice. “Can you not say with greater certainty?”

  “I cannot,” said Millcock. “Obviously the animal has the ca-pacity—the strength and appetite—perhaps even the disposi' tion. That’s plain enough. On the other hand, both the bearwards swear the bear was not permitted to wander from the pit and no witnesses have come forth to testify to having seen him loose. Had he been, surely he would have been seen and an alarm given. And as Mr. Babcock has stated, to prove the dead man was killed and eaten by a bear is not to prove it was his particular bear. That, sir, is the long and short of it. My work is done.”

  With that, Millcock directed his gaze to each person in the tent as though to ask if there were any more questions. Then, pleading an urgent appointment elsewhere, he took his leave.

  The two bearwards now accompanied Justice Baynard, the Clerk, and the sergeant out of the tent to discuss the matter further. Matthew and Joan remained inside to converse with Gabriel, whom they found a very agreeable, well-spoken young man. Gabriel confirmed that the bear had not been once outside the bear pit and said that he surely would have been aware of it had the truth been otherwise- Their conversation with the helper was foreshortened by Babcock’s return. He was all smiles now, and Joan supposed the news was good.

  It was. Babcock, almost beside himself with glee, gave a rap-turous account of it all. Samson had not been exonerated, but the charges against him had been suspended and the bear was now free on good behavior, a condition that evidently required constant surveillance of the animal and, above all, no more mysterious deaths in Smithfield. But from what Joan could make of the bearward’s excited report, the decision in Samson’s favor had depended on more than a lack of concrete evidence. Questions of property rights, profits and losses, the reputation of the fair, and the prospect of a larger crowd drawn to Smithfield because of Samson’s notoriety had also been con~ sidered along with lesser matters such as public safety and the right of the dead man, whoever he was, to be avenged by the law.

  “My fortune is now made!” Babcock exclaimed in a transport of happiness.

  “How so?” asked Joan, somehow missing the cause of this celebratory mood.

  “Very simple,” he said. “The Clerk has said it and the Justice agrees. Samson is now the most famous bear in London. A famous man'killer.”

  “Notorious, you mean,” Joan remarked, skeptically.

  Out of politeness she joined her husband in congratulating the bearward for his narrow escape from public disgrace and financial ruin, but she was not without misgivings. Privately, she thought the bear was guilty as charged and she believed Babcock knew that too and was denying it for perfectly under^ standable reasons. Babcock had been very lucky, he and his bear. The evidence against Samson, if not conclusive, had at least been more than circumstantial. The body at the muckhill had been ravaged by a large, ferocious animal. That was a fact. The same body, the evidence showed, had been in the vicinity of a bear. The bearwards and their helper swore themselves

  hoarse the creature had not been out of their sight since their arrival in Smithfield, a claim no witness had come forth to re-fute. All that was lacking in evidence was something to tie the dead man to the particular bear under suspicion. What Joan could not understand was this: if Samson killed the man, then the deed was done in the bear compound, perhaps in the very tent she now stood!
And if so, then how did the man’s parts get to the muckhill, more than a quarter mile away?

  Samson could have dragged the body there, but evidently didn’t since it was unthinkable that such a creature could roam the neighborhood without being seen by someone. That left a human accomplice to consider.

  Babcock himself came first to her mind, or Francis Crisp. Or the both of them. But then, suddenly, she remembered how Gabriel made his journey from the pit to the muckhill twice or thrice a day, with the bear’s waste. That rickety wheelbarrow with its noxious load. She began to suspect him too.

  Yet he was such an amiable, well-spoken young man.

  Before it was light enough for Gabriel to see his hand before his face, Babcock had him up and policing the pit and tent. Babcock did not say why, but Gabriel knew. Someone was coming to have a look round, someone important.

  But Gabriel had already seen to it that no evidence of human remains could be found there.

  It had not been murder, what he had done. Murder was a sin against God, expressly forbidden. He had carried out a command of that still, small voice in his head—the same voice that had told him to kill the puppet master on the London road, the same voice that told him now how nearly he had come to sinning with Rose Dibble the night before in his dream, if dream could inspire such passion in blood and groin. The flames of desire had engulfed him and had painfully singed his conscience, and although he had since sought the means of his repentance, the reclaiming of the special privilege as an executor of God’s judgments on the wicked, the memory lingered and stung.

  It had been the Devil’s work, his near fall from grace, and he cursed the flesh that so regularly played host to the enemies of his soul. Since his first view of Rose, he had felt a stirring in his bosom. Her dreamy quality he saw not as defect but as sign of God’s providential hand upon her. He recognized her as a sand tified sister among the Smithfield harlots. And yet she was also woman, a daughter of Eve, clear-eyed and well formed, supple as a young willow, her mouth small and ripe.

  But even these thoughts flirted with evil and the destruction of his personal righteousness.

  That morning he had watched while the officers had come to the pit, watched while they poked into corners and stared stu^ pidly at Samson as though the bear would presently confess his own guilt. He recognized the sergeant in his leather jerkin and the clothier of Chelmsford and his little wife in her finery and hated them with a quiet, intense hatred he reserved for those who thought themselves righteous but inside were rotten with concupiscence and worldliness, dressing their bodies for show, bearing themselves with worldly pride and vanity, regarding with haughty stares those for whom honest poverty was a badge of sanctity. The smug, self-satisfied clothier and his wife, the learned man of science, the minions of the law with their in^ sipid faith in the arm of flesh. A book of sermons could not have preached sounder doctrine of their imminent destruction than this parade of fools.

  They had discovered nothing. As he intended they should not. All were mired in their own ignorance, as blind as bats.

  God’s work could not be easily brought to naught. Not by the law of a corrupt state, not by the temptations of his own flesh. Nearly undone by a stirring in his groin—the very seat of concupiscence—Gabriel Stubbs had put the old man from him and had been since his devout prayer of the night before a new man. Now he saw himself in a distinguished company of penb tents, beginning with Father Adam. He thought of David and

  his Bathsheba, Solomon with great Sheba’s Queen. There was Samson too, undone, unmanned, unsighted by a woman’s wiles. These were men of renown, and Gabriel’s weakness had placed him among them.

  But not his sin alone. He realized that his present remorse of conscience was proof of his election. Whom the Lord loves, he chastens. Sound doctrine. He would be forgiven and strengthened.

  The deaths meant nothing, then. His conscience was devoid of offense. The voices in his head, which each day grew more insistent, would be obeyed; and God’s vengeance on the wicked exacted.

  By two o’clock Matthew and Joan were part of a mighty throng of holidaymakers lining Gilt-spur Street to hear the Lord Mayor of London proclaim Bartholomew Fair officially begun.

  Moments before, Joan had stood breathless with excitement and patriotic fervor and nearly deafened too by the explosion of cannon and the clamor of church bells as the Lord Mayor had come riding by, making his way with great difficulty, so large was the press of bodies packing the narrow street, all waving and cheering. Resplendent in his scarlet gown and gold chain of office, the Lord Mayor was preceded by a liveried servant bearing scepter, sword, and cap upon a velvet pillow and was followed by twelve Principal Aldermen of the City, also adorned in scarlet and chains of office and as proudly mounted. The crowd much appreciated this spectacle. They howled with delight, elbowed for positions of better vantage, gaped at the gowns and jewels that were worth a king’s ransom.

  The Mayor and his retinue stopped before the Great Gate, remaining mounted the better to be heard and seen. As the crowd grew quiet, the Lord Mayor unrolled a large scroll handed to him by an Alderman and began to read the proclamation.

  He first commanded that all those present keep the peace during the fair. Then he directed merchants of wine, ale, beer, and bread to sell by honest weights and measures. This was a popular injunction, and there was a great roar of approval from the crowd. When the clamor had ceased, the Mayor went on to enjoin all those who might have complaint not to take the law into their own hands hut present their grievances to the Stew-ards of the Fair, by whom he meant the Justices of the Pie-Powders. In concluding, he called out “God Save the Queen,” and the cry was immediately taken up by the multitude, who screamed themselves hoarse with it, at the same time moving toward the gate, so that the Mayor and the Aldermen of the City were at pains to avoid being swept away by the human tide.

  Matthew and Joan moved forward with the rest, but the gate was too narrow to admit the multitude efficiently and soon they seemed to be standing dead still with hardly room to breathe. It was then Joan felt a tug at her sleeve and, turning around, saw that it was Esmera.

  How long the woman had been just at her back Joan could not tell and was half-afraid to wonder. Cannons began thunder-ing again. Baroom! Baroom! Matthew was facing, doggedly, forward, his eyes fixed on the gate. Joan decided not to call his attention to Esmera’s presence, and to try to ignore the woman herself. But Esmera was insistent; she tugged again on Joan’s loose, flowing sleeve. Finally, seeing that ignoring the plea for attention was useless, Joan turned around. Esmera mouthed some words, lost in a tumult of explosion and cheering. Her dark eyes implied some new warning. But the crowd suddenly surged ahead, taking Joan with it. A contingent of rowdy apprentices released from their labors for the holiday intervened with laughing, bobbing heads and loud shouts.

  Matthew steered Joan through the Great Gate, his face still forward while she looked back helplessly at the vanishing figure, a lone dark face amid a host of faces.

  • 106 •

  • 11 •

  At the first pig booth Matthew and Joan came to—not the beastly Ursula’s but one with pretty tablecloths and a decent clientele of merchants and their wives—Matthew, having missed his dinner and slighted breakfast, stuffed himself like a gamecock while Joan tried her best to explain about the fortune-teller, whom her husband had caught no glimpse of minutes before and was not pleased to hear mentioned again. Matthew washed down his meat with tepid ale, wiped his mouth upon a napkin, and lectured her on her gullibility. “What did the woman have to say—more dire warnings?”

  “She tried to speak,” she replied. “I couldn’t hear for the roar. Soon we were carried away.” Her husband’s tone nettled her.

  “I warrant you it was the price for her services she was trying so hard to communicate,” he said.

  “I think it was something more serious,” she answered.

  “She’s at it again then,” Matthew said, motioning to the tapster fo
r a refill. “A most persistent creature, this Esmera. Drumming up business with dreadful omens. Well, if you missed speaking for the multitude, I’d call it good luck. I supposed you had given up this silliness. The woman is a fraud. It’s as plain as the nose on your face.”

  Joan began to protest that it was not so plain. She did not like this cynical vein in her husband and was not accustomed to it, for she had always found him an open-minded man, ready to give the strange and not readily explained the benefit of doubt. Had he not always lent a sympathetic ear to her own prophesies—her glimmerings, as she called them—the unbeckoned visions that from time to time in her life had betokened both

  the evil and the good? Or had his respect for her own gifts been only seeming tolerance for an addled female he must not cen-sure, for she was his wife? Men! For a moment she con-templated a world without them, then came back to reality again.

  Matthew was continuing his diatribe against Esmera, so strongly worded as though the woman had already her hands in his own pocket. He had never seen her, but he knew her kind—given to a devilish eloquence, cunning and subtle insin-uations. Joan realized that it would do no good to argue further. It wasn’t, after all, that she really needed her husband’s ap-proval. She was a free-born woman, was she not? No puling wife harnessed to her husband’s wagon. She had visited Esmera by herself when she was neglected because Matthew would go on another hour with his friend. She decided to visit Esmera again. She had the remainder of the afternoon before her and no household to manage. Why shouldn’t she, if it was her will?