The Bartholomew Fair Murders

by Leonard Tourney

Ursula appeared. She was fuming and cursing Grotwell, who had her in tow and who explained over her thunderings that he had found her wandering around in the compound looking for Jack Talbot. Someone had told her he had come to this same bear garden earlier that morning and had not been seen since and indeed had not opened his booth for business although there was as great a demand for liquor of every kind as Ursula had seen in twenty years because of the great heat.

  “Jack is here, beastly woman,” the Justice said scornfully, pointing a finger at the tarpaulin that had been pulled over the body again. Grotwell walked over and lifted the tarpaulin.

  “What is this?” Ursula asked gruffly, peering at what the tarpaulin concealed. “Jack?” she said, then cried out with anguish.

  “We think it was Gabriel Stubbs who did it,” said the Justice. “Mr. Babcock’s helper.”

  Ursula straightened up and looked menacingly at Ned Bab' cock. “The bearward’s helper! Well, damn his rotten soul, then.” She clinched her jaw and made both hands into fists. Her bosom heaved. “My prophetic soul, if I didn’t suspect the whelp from the first day I laid eyes on him. Did he not come round practicing his lechery on my own servant, Rose Dibble, a lazy, idle creature with no more brains than a cabbage? See now where this all has led—to the death of poor sweet Jack, who was ever as tender with me as with his own blessed mother. I swear ’fore God it’s all true.”

  “If this Rose you speak of had anything to do with Stubbs, we should speak to her as well,” said the Justice. He turned to Grotwell. “Go fetch her—this Rose Dibble. And do gather your men as before I commanded.” Grotwell went to do what he was told.

  Ursula said, “Aye, fetch the slimy grasshopper’s thighs, for I will pluck out her eyes and make soup of ’em.”

  Ignoring this terrible threat, Justice Baynard went on with his instructions. “The hue and cry must be raised,” he said.

  But the Clerk, a cool head in emergencies, said he wondered about the wisdom of such an action.

  “Wisdom?” asked the Justice, amazed that such a practical and seemingly obvious expedience should be questioned. “And why not? The crazed fellow will escape—and he may kill again.”

  “Because, sir,” said the Clerk in a calm, steady voice, “if the hue and cry is raised you will create a panic at the fair. The booths all round will be emptied of custom as the fainthearted burghers flee from the alarm of murder. And the deaths will surely be multi' plied, as the more villainous use the opportunity to disguise their own crimes of violence. No, sir, the madman must be found indeed—for the sake of justice and public safety. But let us not resort to the hue and cry but proceed with discretion and policy. A public announcement will do no more than alarm him and the

  citizenry. Nor would such a ruckus be pleasing to Her Majesty, who all the world knows comes to the fair tomorrow.”

  Concluding his plea, the Clerk looked to Matthew for support. Matthew, a man of business himself, was not unsympathetic to the Clerk’s argument. He agreed that a hue and cry would probably drive Stubbs away rather than result in his capture. During the next few days Smithfield and its annual fair would be the most densely populated square mile in England. Finding a single boy who by girth and height was in no way remarkable and who might disguise his appearance with very little trouble would be like finding a certain ant in an anthill. And if Stubbs did escape, crazed as he obviously was, who knew what mischief he might do elsewhere?

  “A carefully organized search of a few men,” said Matthew, “may yield better results than a rampage of every drunken roisterer in the fair—who will have many a young man remotely resembling Stubbs hanged to every tree limb for the simple joy of watching them dangle. Besides, Stubbs may not know we know of his mischief, and he may yet return if not frightened away by our assembly.”

  “Will you lend us a hand in the search, Mr. Stock?” asked the Justice. “You know this Stubbs by sight.”

  “I’ll give what help I can,” replied Matthew resolutely. He suggested that the bearward’s investors—Pullyver and Chapman—also be recruited for the search. “They’re true men and know both Stubbs and Smithfield well,” Matthew said, glancing at Babcock for support.

  The bearward agreed, and Francis Crisp was sent to fetch the two men. Joan offered her help also, ignoring the fact that her aid had not been solicited. “Perhaps Stubbs is with Rose Dibble,” she conjectured aloud. “If we find the girl, then ...”

  “And the sooner the better for her, it would seem,” said the Justice darkly.

  “I’ll find them both, wherever they have concealed themselves,” Ursula growled. The pig-woman had been silent during the forgoing conversation; her round, red face was streaked

  with a few pendulous tears. Now the thought of the fugitives had reawakened her wrath and desire for vengeance. Breathing heavily, she presented a frightening picture of imminent female violence, her nostrils flaring, her fists clinched like iron mallets.

  “You’ll do nothing of the kind,” snapped the Justice. “Go about your business. Say nothing of what has happened here. Not to a soul. If this Rose of yours comes back to the booth or is there when you return, do nothing to her. Say nothing about Talbot or Stubbs or murder or such matters. Do not commit any violence upon her body, but bring me word at once to my house near Pie-Comer.”

  Somewhat grudgingly, Ursula indicated she would obey these instructions, but her nostrils continued to flare and her heavy breasts rose and fell like blacksmith’s bellows. With swollen red eyes full of hatred she glared at the Justice and the Clerk, and then at the Stocks too.

  “And should you see Stubbs, you are to do nothing either,” the Justice warned as Ursula went off.

  “Now,” said the Justice to the others with a sigh of resolve, “we must indeed organize ourselves. As for you, Mr. Babcock and Mr. Crisp,” he continued, regarding the bearwards sternly, “you are not to be blamed here, nor your bear Samson, who now appears an innocent accomplice of a maniacal Puritan. Yet I would look to your own safety. Stubbs’s possessions—including this cursed pamphlet which seems to have inspired his madness—remain here. He may return for them. In the meantime, his weapon is not to be found and it is more than reasonable to assume he has it with him and intends to use it again. I would watch myself very carefully if I were you. When is the next baiting?”

  “Tomorrow, sir, in the morning,” Babcock said.

  “Well, then, pray we have our murderer in hand by then. The baiting is certain to draw another huge crowd to the pit and that can only frustrate our efforts, if Stubbs is still at large. Certain it is he will be wary of capture.”

  While these things were being said, Joan stood thinking of Esmera. The woman had been right about everything—the beast,

  the murder, the instrument of death. All she had seen in her vision as quickened by the touch of Joan’s hand. And all had come to pass. Except for her own and Matthew’s share of the risk. That had not happened. Not yet at least; she prayed God it wouldn’t.

  Yet despite her anxiety of the day and the awful revelation of the murders, Joan felt some degree of satisfaction. Her own trust in the fortune-teller had been vindicated. Matthew had been proven wrong, and like any strong-minded wife of an equally strong-minded husband, she longed to exult in her victory. But the alley was not the place, and the company was wrong too. To the Justice and the Clerk, content it seemed to exclude her from these dangerous proceedings, she would surely have appeared as unsound of mind as the crazed boy they now sought were she to begin discoursing on the amazing parallels between these dire murders and the cunning-woman’s prophecy.

  Justice Baynard assigned Matthew to patrol the lanes immediately adjacent to the bear garden. “Look in every booth, scan every visage, Mr. Stock. There’s a few hours of daylight left at least. Take advantage of it before darkness. Master Clerk and I will wait here for your return.”

  Matthew advised Joan to return to the inn. It was late. Surely she wanted a good supper after the day’s excitement.


  But Joan was not hungry. How could she think of eating after a long day of animal and human carnage, startling revelations, and the threat of further murders in the offing? She said she would keep him company on his patrol. She too knew the fugitive by sight—and Rose Dibble too. Four eyes were better than two, she reasoned.

  But Matthew insisted that it was too dangerous. He insisted she return to the Hand and Shears. And so she would, if he had anything to say about it.

  • 141 *

  • 15 •

  Gabriel Stubbs is on his way back to the bear garden, push' ing the empty wheelbarrow before him and whistling a hymn. He has just turned down the narrow, twisted alley between the booths when he glimpses the assembly of men clustered outside Samson’s tent. He stops dead in his tracks. His pulse races. He makes himself flat against the ratty canvas side of a con-fectioner’s booth, watching like a fox whose keen eyes see every movement—every twitch, flutter, and blink—of its victim in a distant field, while from the lane-side of the booth, quite out of sight, comes the frank, ribald laughter of sinners gluttonizing on marchpane and other dainties, such sweet stuff to rot the gums and destroy the soul.

  Among the men he recognizes his employers and the Stocks, husband and wife. The Clerk of the Fair is there too, a very proud man. Gabriel Stubbs also sees Grotwell, the sergeant of the watch, emerging from the tent with that obstreperous she' devil Ursula at his tail like a fury, railing and cursing.

  Yes, the wine seller has been found, Gabriel Stubbs thinks, worse luck.

  The sergeant lifts the tarpaulin and shows what’s beneath to Ursula, who cries out as though she herself were just stabbed and slashed and bloody. The men converse. Gabriel Stubbs can hear nothing for the noise of the lane, but because of her ges' tures and expressions he can discern that Ursula demands to know who has murdered her friend. But if she is being told, Gabriel cannot tell; the words are lost in the air. At the safe distance he must maintain from these proceedings, all is a dumbshow of gesture and grimace.

  But his deed has been discovered, that’s plain. And he fears

  they have found out his part too. Then he thinks that perhaps they have not. Did not the death of Simon Plover (foolish knave!) remain a mystery to them, thanks to the good offices of a hungry bear ignorant of the distinction between human flesh and butcher’s offal? Might not this new death, so sudden and inexplicable to them, be laid at the door of some nameless malefactor? Are there not a devil’s plenty of such sort at the fair, not to mention old enemies of the dead man rubbed raw by some new or imagined grievance?

  Gabriel is in a quandary and much in need of a burst of revelation on the matter. Should he go forward, reveal himself, or remain concealed? Quickly and fervently, he offers a prayer that floats upward in the heavy air but to no avail, for no answer descends to illuminate his darkness. At length he concludes the decision must be his own. He decides to remain away from the bear garden until he can determine which way the winds of suspicion blow.

  For the killing of Jack Talbot, Gabriel Stubbs feels neither remorse nor strong satisfaction. He feels very little if the truth be told. If he has thought about the incident at all, he has thought about it as a sacrifice—holy violence he has been bidden by his voices to perform and from which, therefore, he feels detached, as though it all were some other man’s act. But the necessity of disposing of the body has been in his mind since the death, for the disposing was yet to be done. Or was, until now. Now Gabriel can see it is too late. The body is found. But has Gabriel covered his traces?

  This concern provokes a recollection of the circumstance of the death, which in the interim has been suppressed in some obscure comer of his memory. It now comes forth and he remembers the living, breathing, damned soul who had provoked the act in the first place.

  It happened this way:

  Not long before the commencement of the baiting, Jack Talbot appeared at Samson’s tent, not to see the bear as it might have been supposed, but Gabriel himself. Both of Gabriel’s employers had been at the time occupied elsewhere: Crisp at the gate, Babcock inside the compound directing spectators to their seats. The wine seller had come in while Gabriel was preparing to open the cage to let Samson out of it, come in griping about how Gabriel and Rose had made use of his booth and bed for their lust, as he termed it. Before Gabriel had had a chance to reply, the wine seller was shaking his fist at the boy’s nose and calling him a filthy whoremaster and knave. “Did I not spy you twain come sneaking from the booth yesternight? Do you sup-pose me a fool to be homed and gulled of my right?”

  “She’s not your wife,” Gabriel had said.

  “Nor is she yours so to use her,” snarled Talbot.

  “I never used her.”

  “Liar! Lousy lecher! Smooth-faced bearer of bear’s turds!”

  Pure jealous rage, that’s what it had been. Gabriel was wise enough to see that. It was the wine seller who was the lecher, the liar, the infidel and corrupter of innocent womanhood, not he.

  Talbot finished his tirade with a mighty oath in which the entire trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Ghost—were incorporated and blasphemed. Gabriel could endure it no longer. When Samson, excited by the dispute, snarled suddenly, Talbot turned around to face the cage. In the same instant, Gabriel drew his poniard and shoved it between Talbot’s shoulder blades, driving him hard against the iron bars.

  He held Talbot there while he stabbed again and again until the wine seller’s jerkin was bloodsoaked. Then he allowed the body to slide down the bars into a heap at his feet.

  Gabriel knelt down beside the body, his heart thumping with such rapidity and loudness that he thought surely it could be heard above the ever-increasing din of the spectators outside the tent. His anger had driven him into a frenzy but he retained sufficient presence of mind to be aware of his danger. Any moment Crisp or Babcock or the both of them could come walking into the tent to inquire why Samson had not been brought forth. And what should they think, finding him thus, bent over

  a dead man—and a bloody knife in his hand to proclaim him murderer?

  He turned the wine seller face up and saw by the man’s flickering eyelids and shallow breathing that by some strange fortune he still lived. Gabriel finished his work quickly. Then he dragged the body out the back of the tent into the alley and covered it with the ragged tarpaulin he found there. He re-turned to Samson’s cage, scooped up an armful of bloody straw, and carried it outside to the wheelbarrow. He returned again to spread fresh straw before the cage, then went out again to the wheelbarrow and pushed it up the alley and around the comer to the butcher’s booth, where human blood and animal would be indistinguishable and unnoticed.

  He remained away from the bear garden during the baiting, returning as soon as it was done. It was then that he had seen the body had been discovered. Discovered before he had had a chance to get rid of it.

  Now there is one last thing that Gabriel recalls in the se-quence of events that is fast slipping into oblivion. He remembers that as he stared down at the dying man there appeared a little film of blood upon his lips. Like wine, wine so thin and watery that it is pink. The man’s eyes are dark and glassy like stagnant pools overhung with thick willows. Then, for a moment—and for a moment only—Talbot’s face is transformed into something strange and terrible. The pasty flesh becomes as black as an Ethiopian’s. The dark eyes grow red and glaring. It is a devil’s visage, the face of the Adversary, the demon of the worst of Gabriel Stubbs’s nightmares.

  Gabriel watches them from his place of concealment, the little cluster of men. He watches as they go back into the tent. Now he must find Rose, he thinks. Find Rose before Ursula does, before the sergeant and his men do.

  He takes a shortcut to the pig-woman’s booth and sees in the midst of the confusion there Rose struggling to serve fifty clamorous customers with only one other tapster to help. It takes a while for him to catch her attention, so great is the multitude all shouting and elbowing each other for service as though what is offered
for sale here is the last pig and beer to be had in the world.

  He tells Rose she must come with him, straightway.

  She flushes with pleasure at the command, but she is con-fused too. She looks around her as though to ask: How can I leave now with Ursula gone somewhere and only Harry Borden to help with this rout?

  “The Lord wills it,” says Gabriel, fixing his eyes on her, breathing the words in such a way to suggest they are not his, but some higher power’s.

  She pales at this dreadful summons but still looks doubtful. A hundred voices now seem to bark in her ears, demanding her immediate attention, but she ignores them all, her attention fully upon Gabriel.

  He takes her hand and leads her away, her apron still about her waist and behind her expressions of anger and amazement. “What? Shall we not be served? Is this a time to dally?” How can she be so bold as to desert her plain duty to provide for the hungry and thirsty of the fair?

  Gabriel leads her on, searching for a place where he can talk to her privately. He needs a hiding place too—at least until he can determine whether the blame for the wine seller’s death has been laid at his door. If he runs too soon, he will only make himself look guilty. If he returns too soon, he may be seized. He needs an ally, and Rose is she.

  As they move through the crowded lane, Gabriel thinks of where he can take Rose, a fine private place, not quiet—as no place in Smithfield can be at fair time—but out of the way of prying eyes at least. It is Talbot’s own booth. Irony of ironies. As it concealed the two of them the night before, it will do so now, he thinks. Its owner will never return, and it will be shunned by those few who know of the death as an unfit resort for the living and an unlikely hideaway for the dead man’s slayer.

  Rose expresses no surprise when she sees the booth and mv derstands that it is their destination. She has followed obe^ diently, seems to be in a trance of sorts, like one not fully awake to the light of day. Gabriel pulls her after him into the back parts of the booth. Grasping her firmly by the shoulders— how thin and frail they feel beneath the cheap cloth of her shift!—he tells her that they must be very quiet here, for he is sought by certain officers.