The Bartholomew Fair Murders

by Leonard Tourney

  Matthew, seeing no further opposition to his counsel, went on to another topic. Husband and wife finished their meal. Then Matthew said, “Peter will be all in a stew with me gone from the Close. He’s such an earnest, conscientious fellow, God save him, and as straight as a candle in a socket. I must return to the Close. Will you come with me? Here, you’re finished. What time of the day must it be?”

  She said she would not return to the Close; rather icily she said it.

  “Will you go back to the Hand and Shears? I should accompany you—”

  “I can look out for myself,” she said. “Go to the Close. You said yourself just now that Peter will be at sixes and sevens without you. Go to the Close; look to your cloth.”

  “You will go back to the inn, then?” he repeated, lifting an eyebrow of suspicion. “But not to this Esmera, this mountebank?”

  Now, she thought, he was being too overbearing with her. “If I will, husband, I shall,” she replied shortly, her hackles up.

  “What, am I a dewy-eyed calf that must be tethered to a post or ever in sight of its mother?”

  “Surely not, I only meant—”

  “Your meaning was plain, Matthew, and I like it not.”

  She held her peace with that determined look that brooked no impediments, while he explained with a worried expression that he had no wish to restrain her liberty. She was free to go and come as she pleased. If it was her pleasure to reject his counsel, which he had provided only for her good, then he would rest content. He forced a smile of conciliation and reached over to kiss her cheek, trying to mitigate her rising indignation with a merry countenance. She permitted the kiss, accepted his submission, but now she was resolved she would not be tethered or restrained, parented in her grandmotherly years, nor have her own good reasons belittled by a man’s coun-sel—even if the man was her husband.

  “Godspeed, then,” he said.

  “Godspeed to you, Matthew.”

  “When will I see you again?”

  “Later. I’ll come to the Close. Watch for me.”

  He said he would, and she moved away—like a river lighter pushing off from the pier to join the larger traffic in the stream—and was presently lost in the crowd.

  With rising excitement, she maneuvered among man, beast, and gear, trying to recall exactly where the fortune-teller’s tent was situated among the lanes of booths and stalls. But everything appeared different now—now that the fair had begun and Smithfield swarmed and roared with beating drums, bugles, and the hoarse cries of sellers in the fierce competition to be heard. “Buy, buy, buy,” they screamed, booth seller and itinerant peddler, proclaiming their own goods and decrying their neighbors’.

  Realizing she was lost, she stopped in the midst of the current, feeling the pressure of movement at her back and the murmur of complaint when she became an impediment to it, for all seemed to move now in the same general direction—

  toward a distant drumbeat signaling, she supposed, an exhibit tion of dancing dogs, a freak of nature, or a puppet show. She moved out of the way and found herself next to a shabby coster-monger with a basket of pears in one arm and his other extended with a sample of the globular fruit in hand, offering it to the crowd. “Pears, pears, fresh and sweet,” he cried in a rasping voice. He was an old man, toothless, with a savage scar across his forehead.

  “Please, I am looking for the fortune-teller. Esmera.”

  The costermonger turned at her voice and prepared to give her the ear; she was forced to ask her question again.

  “A fortune-teller, you say? I’faith, good woman, there’s many a one at Bartholomy Fair,” he declared in a cranky old man’s voice, blasting her with the fetid breath of rotting gums.

  “Her name is Esmera,” Joan explained, pronouncing the foreign-sounding name slowly and deliberately. When it was obvious the name meant nothing to the old man, Joan described the tent.

  “Stars, you say? An image of the heavens?” The costermonger nodded and scratched his chin thoughtfully. He said he thought he knew of such a woman after all. He had passed such a tent as Joan had described within the hour. Had sold five or six of his pears there to this same woman’s patrons, glad to have a sweet, succulent pear of the sort he carried in his basket. The pennies he had received for them were still palm-warm in his purse.

  “And where was this tent?” Joan asked, impatient with the old man’s prattle.

  The costermonger shrugged and shuffled his feet, staring down to the little leather bladder at his belt. His purse. Joan got the idea. She bought two of the pears, and the old man took her money and raised his head like a dog sniffing at the wind, looking all about him. He pointed up a lane of stalls Joan had not yet explored. But Joan was doubtful. The two pears she had purchased as a price for her information looked neither sweet nor succulent, and the way he had shown her to Esmera’s

  tent seemed not at all familiar. And yet what was she to do? If Esmera’s tent was not where he said, then she would give over her search. She would return to the Close, grant her husband his share of wisdom, and allow God to determine her fate and his.

  This lane was occupied by sellers of candies, toys, and cheap souvenirs hawked from rickety booths made of slender poles with ragged canvas tops. Joan saw a great many children in the lane (to one of whom she gave the pears gratis) and an equal number of laborers, idle riffraff, unattached young men—many flirting with the sellers, mostly girls of their own age in muslin caps and aprons like milkmaids.

  Joan passed resolutely by the candy and the toys, the pretty wooden figurines and the samplers with pious sayings, the bot-ties of colored glass and the bewildering assortment of geegaws fetched from as far away as Poland or Moscovy. On another occasion these things might have caught her attention for a moment, but today she had no leisure. She ignored the invitations to buy extended by the sellers, who recognized in this little woman in velvet hood and cape a person of means; she ignored them still when the invitations turned to insults at her indifference. They called her “mistress nose-in-the-air” and “mistress high-and-mighty,” and she blushed with shame and embarrassment as she became the object of ridicule of both the sellers and their customers, whose heads turned to look upon every new thing and who were as pleased to stare at Joan as at the bull with the fifth leg or the boy with the man-size pizzle. How she wished again she had never set foot in London, never braved filthy Smithfield. How she wished she was back in Chelmsford, where her reputation and person were secure. She was at the point of retreat when she glimpsed what she sought—the familiar shape and gaudy hue of a tent only a few yards ahead where the lane of stalls came to an end in an expanse of field.

  She pushed on, jostled by the crowd, and a sudden opening of the way revealed her journey’s end. There it stood. The sign

  in front boldly declared the owner’s name and profession. The mystical symbols on the tent confirmed it. Before the tent, a small company had gathered and had arranged themselves in an orderly file, attracted, Joan supposed, by a curiosity as powerful as her own.

  The line began a few paces from Esmera’s tent flap and extended twenty feet or more along the bank of a ditch of brackish water. Conducting Esmera’s patrons in and out was a scrawny little man in a sweat-stained jerkin that appeared just snatched from some ragpicker’s cart. He conducted his business—opening and closing the tent flap, taking pennies, smiling and bowing—with much ostentation and ridiculous ceremony that was the source of some amusement among the crowd. In his duties he was assisted by a wretched boy, so pale and thin he was the very image of ravaged mortality, who scrambled up and down the line exhorting those waiting to be patient, assuring them that the wise woman would converse with them all, and warning them against falling backward into the ditch whose bank, he declared in a high-pitched, whiny voice, was exceedingly treacherous.

  Joan found the stench of the ditch almost beyond endurance and wondered that other of Esmera’s patrons could brave both it and the heat of the day, but those in line s
eemed indifferent to both sources of discomfort. A mixture of condition and sex, they stood quietly facing the tent door or with backsides to the ditch, conversing among themselves with the familiarity of old acquaintances. She was not surprised when, joining the line a few moments later, she discovered that the matter of their conversation was the cunning-woman herself, who was evidently more famous in the neighborhood than Joan had ever supposed.

  In front of her was a stout, goose-faced housewife wearing a dark purple smock with stains beneath the arms like halfmoons. She was girded with a crisp white apron and although her face was red and moist, she seemed more than content to be where she was. The woman turned to regard Joan with an ingratiating smile and began to praise Esmera. “Worth every

  penny,” exulted the housewife, nodding with the self-assurance of one who knows a bargain when she sees it. “She told my cousin all that she did as a child, then prophesied that she would find riches at her door. Within a fortnight all came true!” The woman’s voice dropped to a confidential whisper and her gray eyes bulged. “Her own brother, not seen in five years or more, came tripping home Tom sea, him all full of coin and silver baubles he had from Spaniards with whom he had crossed swords. The family is nigh unto wealth now, and they owe ail to Esmera.”

  Joan thought the woman’s reasoning hid a fundamental error; for even if Esmera foresaw the future in a patron’s palm, was she due thanks for shaping it? But Joan kept her reservations to herself and the housewife hugged her aproned belly self-protectively and smiled with glee in contemplation of her cousin’s wealth.

  The woman’s neighbor, a plainly dressed girl with a scarf on her head, had overheard this exchange and now joined in the conversation. She confirmed the impression of Esmera that Joan had just received from the housewife. Esmera was indeed a wonder. Her prophecies were the talk of the town. In the reading of palms she was as skillful as Drake or some other great captain in steering the straits and uncharted waters of the future. And all in the human palm! Those lines, wrinkles, bumps, crevices of pink flesh! The girl tugged at her scarf and said she did not mind waiting in the line, although she confessed of once nearly slipping backward into the ditch (and had she not seen a rat the size of a spaniel plop there in the scum!). The line was not half the length she feared it would be. Her confidence in Esmera was unshaken. She hoped the wise woman would help her choose between the two young men vying for her affections.

  But the line did advance slowly, Joan thought as the afternoon waned and the chatter of her neighbors in the line grew tedious. She began to have second thoughts about her quarrel with Matthew. Had he been right all along? Was she being

  manipulated by a clever schemer—a guller of the ignorant who knew subtle ways to arouse curiosity and instill fear? Joan was in a good mind to leave, to return to the Close as she had prom-ised. But she had invested so much time waiting. There was her pride too. No mere thing, that!

  She decided to wait.

  The sight of a familiar face at the tent door now caught her attention. How could she not have recognized that long, tallow-faced figure in the same suit he had worn the night be-fore? It was John Pullyver, the greengrocer. She wondered she had not seen him there, then decided he had paid someone to hold his place in line. But it was certainly Pullyver. There could not be two in London so alike.

  Pullyver was walking in her direction, skirting the edge of the line, and somewhat furtive in expression. When he was about to pass Joan, apparently without seeing her, she called out his name.

  “Mr. Pullyver, a very good afternoon to you, sir.”

  The greengrocer stopped at the sound of his name and looked her up and down quite impertinently. He did not seem to rec^ ognize her, and Joan found this nettling. Obnoxious man, was she that common that he did not remember having conversed with her less than twenty Tour hours before? She decided to revenge herself for this slight of her person. Meanwhile, Pullyver continued to regard her, taking in the velvet hood and cape, the handsome jewel on her marriage finger, the gown of a woman of some means, though a country woman indisputably. Joan could follow the man’s thinking in his face. His expression softened; he assumed an air of politeness and spoke her fair.

  “Good day to you, mistress. Taking the air of Smithfield, I see. Delighted to see you . . . again.”

  Pullyver’s expression remained perplexed. His manner was awkward. And for a moment the thought passed through her mind that the greengrocer knew very well who she was and for some obscure reason was pretending forgetfulness.

  “I see you have been inquiring of the prophetess,” she said.

  “Oh, she, ” Pullyver said dismissively, casting a glance back at the tent from which he had just emerged. “Yes, just a little matter regarding the disposition of my goods. Where to place this vegetable or that fruit—all to breed the better commerce. A man of business looks out for every opportunity to improve himself.”

  “Oh, indeed he does,” Joan agreed, smiling broadly. “EspeC' ially one in the way of a fair wife. And I am here”—she noted the furious blush on Pullyver’s face at her remark about the wife—“to satisfy a whim of my husband’s.”

  She savored the irony of this innocent falsehood. Whim of her husband’s indeed! But why was Pullyver really here? She held him with her chatter. He seemed eager to be gone. But after a few minutes her inventory of casual topics had been exhausted.

  “Well, I really must be off,” he said, tipping his hat. “Business elsewhere. So hot here in the sun. And the stench from yonder bank!” The greengrocer made a face of disgust and raised a handkerchief filled with pomander to his nostrils. “Give my regards to your good husband.”

  “I shall, I shall,” said Joan, smiling slyly and replying to his courtesy with a bow of her own.

  She watched Pullyver until he reached the end of the line and then turned up the lane of candy sellers, where he was joined by a woman with whom he stopped to converse. Joan recognized the woman too. It was Ned Babcock’s somber daughter, her mourning garments sharply contrasting with the gay attire of most of the holidaymakers.

  The pair exchanged some words and then went on together. How Joan would like to have been privy to that conversation! She wondered what the both of them were up to, for indeed they seemed up to some intrigue, although she could not imag' ine what it was.

  But now she had mo. ed up closer to the tent and her heart began to beat with anticipation. The girl with the scarf went in and came out again, all within a very short time, and yet what'

  ever Esmera had said to her had obviously pleased her greatly, for she came out grinning from ear to ear and wished Joan good day.

  Now Joan’s turn had come at last. She paid her penny to the little doorman and he lifted the tent flap. She went in.

  Esmera was seated as before. Her hands with their long be^ jeweled fingers entwined rested upon the round table. Esmera was looking down, her head slightly bent in the pose of an anchorite. She was wearing her hooded robe and Joan won-dered how she could endure it. The heat in the tent was stb fling.

  Esmera looked up and recognized Joan.

  “I wanted to speak to you at the gate,” Joan said, “but I couldn’t hear you for all the noise. What’s the message you have for me? It’s something terrible, is it? Something more about my husband and me?”

  Esmera’s expression, a mixture of pity and fear, confirmed Joan’s worst suspicions. It was something dreadful, and it did have something to do with Matthew and her.

  “Please sit down, Mrs. Stock.”

  Joan was more than ready to sit down. The heat had made her faint and the growing anxiety in her bosom was also work' ing to undo her. She sat down on the stool opposite Esmera and fixed her eyes on the woman. The expression on that strangely exotic face softened and became sympathetic.

  “I have seen a vision,” Esmera said.

  “A vision?”

  “Of death.”

  Joan’s heart sank. She beat down an urge to flee. But she knew she must remain.
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  “Whose?” Joan asked, afraid to learn but knowing the ques^ tion must be asked, yes and answered too.

  Esmera leaned forward and stared at Joan intently. “You are in graver danger than I supposed before, Mrs. Stock,” she whis' pered conspiratorily, her long face made somewhat pale by the intensity of her concentration.

  “So you said when last we met,” Joan said. “I came because I thought you might explain from what quarter the threat of death would come. Your expression in the crowd convinced me you had perceived some more certain danger than before.”

  “Ah, and so I have.”

  “And that danger is . . .”

  Esmera closed her eyes; her head began to sway from side to side; she was lost in some trance, all the while making a soft crooning noise and clutching Joan’s hand as though she were able to decipher the lines in the flesh by touch alone.

  Then the crooning and swaying stopped and Esmera opened her eyes and seemed to stare at something in the middle dis-tance. Joan sat transfixed, her heart beating at an accelerated rhythm. She was half-sick; her clothing clung to her; and yet she knew nothing could make her leave now. She must find out what Esmera knew.

  “Who was it you saw in your vision?” she repeated urgently, unable to endure longer the suspense.

  “I see a body of a dead man,” Esmera said in a faraway voice. “I cannot see his face, only his shape. I see his murderer too. And the weapon with which the deed was done.”

  “Weapon? It was no beast then?”

  “Oh, it is a beast indeed. The worst of beasts. The most malign of God’s creatures. The only beast that will kill its own kind when its belly’s full and its other lusts are satisfied. I can see him triumph in his crime. He laughs at his victim. He thinks himself very clever, and the worst of it is that he is clever indeed. The body of his victim is discovered but no one suspects the cause of death—no one save one.”

  “Who?”

  “Your husband.”

  “But you said there was a weapon?” Joan blurted. “Surely the cause of death would be evident to all.”