The Bartholomew Fair Murders

by Leonard Tourney

  But then her eye fell upon something on the much besmirched page. She ceased to read aloud and reread the lines to herself.

  “Why have you stopped reading?” he asked from the bed, his eyes closed. “Is there something there?”

  “A clue at last,” she said.

  She read the lines—a part of a larger passage—again, slowly

  and with emphasis. Then she read the whole text of which the line was a part, the seventeenth chapter of the Book of Revela' tion. It was one of Foxworth’s favorites, and it spoke of a Great Whore with whom the kings of the earth had committed for' nication. It spoke of scarlet raiment, gold and precious stones, and a golden cup. This same Whore had drunk from the cup the blood of the saints. She had become drunken with the blood of the saints. “The saints,” Joan said. “Mark that, Mat' thew. Do the sanctified brethren not commonly refer to them' selves as saints? This same Whore has drunk their blood. She is their enemy, Gabriel Stubbs’s enemy, and he hers.”

  “And so?” he said, prompting her on. She had his attention now. He was sitting up in bed, his head thrust forward.

  Joan now read the comment Stubbs had wedged into the margin of the same page in his tiny handwriting: “A goodly image of our most prideful Queen, this scarlet whore, yet she too God will judge. ”

  “Certain it is that God will judge—us all,” Matthew said when Joan had finished reading and looked up at him for his response. “Vengeance is mine. Judge not lest ye be judged. He’s orthodox on that point of doctrine. But the rest is gross slander. Yes and treason too, since it is written against the Queen.”

  “I’faith it is treason,” Joan declared with equal conviction, her eyes falling again to the page. “But see, here’s more. Here a Scripture is cited.”

  “No marvel that, the pamphlet is full of it,” Matthew said. “Haven’t we read enough? Stubbs has convicted himself with his own words. Had he drawn no other blood than a flea’s and written such words he would go to his hanging and no jury would have thought twice of it. Surely this man is a danger to Her Majesty.”

  “John, chapter and verse,” she said. “That alone.”

  “Which chapter and verse?”

  “Chapter eleven, verse fifty.”

  Matthew didn’t recognize the text, nor did Joan. “It probably isn’t important,” he said. “If it were, Stubbs would have written

  it out. He’s capable of infinite pains in such matters. His treasonous slanders are enough evidence for me.”

  Matthew had found where he put his shoes the night before and was now bent over tying the laces.

  “But the verse may be important too,” she protested. “The rest of it was. We must find a Bible.”

  He looked up and made a wry face. “What? Here in Smithfield? As well look for a virgin in the great Turk’s harem.” “Matthew!”

  He sighed; he was eager to send word of this fresh discovery to Sir Robert. He looked at Joan. Well, what did another quarter of an hour matter since the news would be bad and the time was ample for the warning?

  “I’ll go ask the host,” he said doubtfully. He went downstairs and found the host, who was enjoying his breakfast in the great room of the inn. Matthew felt foolish asking the man for a Bible. Where did he think he was, in church? Or at one of the universities where books were as common as beggars, or at the bookstalls at Paul’s where they lay stacked like cordwood? Besides, the host did not look the sort of fellow that would own a Bible.

  The host looked up from his rasher of bacon, seemed perplexed for a moment by the strangeness of Matthew’s question, and then answered, “A Bible, Mr. Stock? Holy Writ, you mean? Well, no, sir. I have none, nor prayerbook either. None is provided, sir,” he said, as though Matthew had asked for clean linen or a second chamber pot. “But there is a learned man residing here. A man of the church. He might own a Bible, sir. Yes, and have it with him too.”

  The host told Matthew where this clergyman could be found and Matthew apologized to the host for the interruption of his breakfast.

  Matthew went to the room where the clergyman was and knocked. His summons was answered by a thin young man of middle height with sallow complexion and spectacles resting precariously on the bridge of his small nose. Matthew intro-

  duced himself and asked the man if he had a Bible in his keep' ing.

  The clergyman said he owned a Bible of course, but did not have it with him. it was with his other possessions, sent on ahead by carter a week before to a church he was presently to serve in Sussex. He apologized profusely that he could not be of service but offered spiritual counsel if that was what Matthew wanted. He also said he had a prayerbook and was reading it at the very moment Matthew knocked upon his door.

  Matthew decided not to be too explicit about his motives. “A wager, sir, as to a certain biblical verse, nothing more.”

  The clergyman laughed. He was a good sort who was not above a wager himself when the mood struck him. “I’ve got a good memory for verses. Try me, sir.”

  “The Gospel of John. The eleventh chapter of the same and the fiftieth verse.”

  The clergyman thought for a moment, then smiled with sat-isfaction. “Ah, yes. The words of Caiaphas the high priest. ‘Nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.’”

  “You’re sure?” Matthew asked, somewhat skeptical at the readiness with which the young clergyman had fetched the passage forth from his memory.

  “Absolutely,” replied the clergyman. “My memory, I assure you, is excellent for such things. When at Oxford I preached once a sermon on the very text, which was much praised. A bookseller there wanted me to print it. He assured me it would sell very well.”

  “I’m not sure I understand the verse,” Matthew said, somewhat cautiously, for he hoped his ignorance of Scripture would not breed a tedious sermon.

  The clergyman invited Matthew to sit down in the plainly furnished room and offered him a cup of wine. For the next quarter of an hour the clergyman discoursed upon the text in question, much to Matthew’s discomfort, for he wanted to get

  back to Joan but as he listened, the meaning of the Gospel text became clearer.

  “The wicked Caiaphas prophesies of the Lord’s sacrifice, quite despite himself and in the darkness of ignorance, for he himself was an unbeliever—a Jew of obdurate heart. Yet he understood the truth of this proposition, that it is better for one man to perish than a whole nation suffer in unbelief.”

  “I suppose the same might be argued of a woman,” Matthew said.

  “What, sir?” exclaimed the clergyman, sitting erect in his chair and regarding Matthew suspiciously, as though he had just advanced a novel heresy.

  “The principle would hold, would it not?” Matthew continued. “For a woman—say, a woman of authority—to die would be preferable to the death of thousands, and perhaps more?”

  The clergyman considered the proposition, making a thoughtful face. He removed his eyeglasses and dangled them at the end of his fingers. “Why, I suppose it would,” he answered at length. “Logic would dictate it, since the distinction between male and female is beside the point, which point pertains rather to the good of many as opposed to that of one alone.”

  The clergyman now warmed to this new theme, but Matthew was afraid to delay further his return to Joan. He hastily thanked the man for his information and was at such pains to get back to his own room and reveal to Joan what he had now concluded concerning Stubbs’s motives that he nearly broke his neck bounding up the stairs.

  “So,” she declared triumphantly when he had told her all. “The pieces fit.”

  “They do indeed,” he said, still breathing heavily from his climb. “I must send word to Sir Robert at once. There is no reason for further delay. This verse and Stubbs’s comment in the margin lend substance to his own surmise—that it is the Queen herself for whom Stubbs lurks. She must on no account come to Smithfield.”

  Matthew was about to a
rrange for such a message when a rapid knocking was heard at the door. Matthew opened it and saw one of Grotwell’s officers standing there. The man’s expres-sion was excited.

  “What is it?” Matthew asked.

  “Another murder, Mr. Stock. The sergeant says you are to come straightway.”

  “Come where—to whom?” Joan asked, coming up behind Matthew and peering suspiciously at the young officer.

  “To the bear garden in the fair,” the man said.

  “Who is dead?” Matthew asked, almost fearing to learn.

  “It’s the bearward himself, sir.”

  “Which?” Joan asked with sinking heart. “Mr. Crisp or Mr. Babcock?”

  “Mr. Babcock it is. He’s been done in, like the others, and it is a dreadful sight to behold.”

  • 19 •

  Shocked and grieved at the news of his friend’s death, Mat-thew did not, however, proceed at once to the bear garden as he was inclined, but first secured paper and pen to compose a message to Cecil. Babcock, he realized, was now beyond help, his soul in heaven, but the Queen remained in jeopardy.

  He wrote quickly and awkwardly, informing Cecil of the bearward’s murder, inferring from the fact that Stubbs was still at large, and conveying as best he could the sum of Stubbs’s slanders and threats against the Queen. He did not repeat the slanders word for word, but couched them in milder language, for God forbid the very phrases of the young Puritan, so grossly treasonous that they fouled the lips to utter them, might have been construed as his own.

  He tried to make it perfectly clear that the danger to the Queen persisted, and he hoped in his heart that Cecil would be moved to call off the royal visit. But he made, himself, no such recommendation. That would not have been his place.

  Matthew sent the message by the host’s boy, whom the host declared was as faithful in such office as the Queen’s courier and fleeter of foot through the London streets. Then he and Joan left at once for the bear garden.

  A crudely lettered notice, chalked on a plank and fixed on the gate of the bear garden, announced that the morning bait' ing had been canceled. Matthew and Joan went directly to Samson’s tent. Pullyver, Chapman, and Babcock’s dour daugh' ter, Juliet, were already there. So were Francis Crisp and the sergeant’s man who had brought word of the death. They were standing silently, turned away from the body that Crisp had found, crumpled in his nightshirt, inside of Samson’s cage. To

  Matthew, Francis explained that his former partner had spent the night with the bear, there being no other watchman. The dead man now lay outside the cage; Crisp had pulled him out. Babcock’s face had been so abused by Stubbs’s knife as to be almost unrecognizable. It was a sight to chill an executioner’s blood.

  The body had been discovered with the poniard protruding from the wounds made in the dead man’s back. The weapon had since been removed and now lay next to the body.

  While Matthew listened to Francis Crisp’s sobbing account of the discovery of his friend and partner, Joan quietly took in as much as she could of the reactions of the others present. Pullyver was comforting Juliet, who was dry-eyed but obviously distressed—if not by her father’s death, at least by the sheer horror of it. Chapman appeared to be sick and kept rubbing his lips with a handkerchief. His face was white and glistened with sweat. Grotwell’s man stood with his hands folded behind his back like a guard at rest, since he was not himself empowered to investigate. Upon Matthew and Joan’s entering, he had informed them that Grotwell and others of the watch had immediately commenced a new search of the neighborhood in the hope of apprehending the murderer while his trail was fresh.

  Matthew was kneeling down beside the body, his eyes avoiding the dead man’s face. He saw the poniard and picked it up. “J.F.,” he said.

  “What’s that, sir?” asked Grotwell’s man, concerned that the clothier of Chelmsford might be tampering with evidence.

  “J.F. Those were the initials of the dead puppet master. James Fitzhugh. It’s Fitzhugh’s blade all right. Stubbs’s blade too.”

  Francis Crisp, tearful and wringing his hands, explained again how he found the body. He said that Babcock had volunteered to spend the night in the tent. “Had I been here, I would have been the dead man,” the bearward remarked grimly. Someone had to watch the bear, feed him in the morning.

  “What hour was he fed?” Matthew asked, rising.

  “At sunrise or thereabouts,” Francis Crisp said. “Samson is marvelously punctual in such matters.” Crisp glanced at the bear, who was dozing inside his cage, indifferent to the horror a few feet beyond and the human grief and confusion around him.

  “Ned’s being in his nightshirt,” Matthew theorized, “suggests he was killed while he slept. Then dragged into the cage. Stubbs had handled the animal before. He’d have no fear for himself. He probably thought the bear would finish poor Ned. Thank God he was wrong on that score at least. Curious, though, that he left his weapon behind.”

  Joan thought this was curious indeed. She said nothing but she thought her husband’s interpretation of events was prol> lematical at best. Why hadn’t Stubbs taken the weapon he had used in the three previous murders and that all evidence indi-cated he was yet to use in killing the Queen? There was some-thing that didn’t fit. She stooped to pick up the poniard, which Matthew had placed on the ground again, holding her revulsion in check for the slender blade was still red with Babcock’s blood. She saw for herself the initials carved in the handle, crudely carved but distinct. J.F. James Fitzhugh. What other evidence was needed to tie the Chelmsford murder with that of the bearward and both to the murderous instincts of Gabriel Stubbs?

  She noticed that the initials seemed freshly carved in the handle. The grooves were white and clean. She called this fact to Matthew’s attention.

  “The puppet master may have come by the blade only re^ cently himself. Remember, Joan, he’s but a week dead. What are you thinking?”

  “Oh, an idle thought, husband, nothing more,” she said, wv sure of what she was thinking but sure that she was not about to reveal her suspicions to the present company.

  At this moment Juliet Beauchamp announced that she had seen enough, and Pullyver offered to accompany her home.

  Chapman said he would go too, but Matthew reminded both men that their aid was needed in identifying Stubbs. He felt sure that upon Grotwell’s return yet another search would be organized. He stopped short of telling them why the apprehension of the young Puritan was so important.

  “He’ll kill us all,” Chapman reflected gloomily. “We that never did him any harm at all.”

  Francis Crisp said that Ned Babcock was as good and honest a soul as ever lived and that he hoped to give Gabriel Stubbs adequate reward for his bloody work the first chance he got. He hoped that the others present felt likewise.

  “We all mourn Ned’s death,” Pullyver said impatiently. “But these searches are really a matter for the sergeant and his men. We’re citizens, not constables.”

  Grotwell now returned; with him were about a dozen men, some dressed in ordinary clothes and wearing the ragged expressions of men dragged from alehouses and brothels for the occasion. “He’s gone to ground again, damn his soul,” Grotwell said, telling the men at his back to remain outside the tent.

  Matthew asked Grotwell if the Clerk and the Justice had been informed of the new murder. Grotwell said they had been informed and that Justice Baynard was to come presently to view the body. It was for this reason alone that it had not been removed from where it was found. Joan asked about Rose Dibble and was told she had been released from custody an hour earlier. Grotwell was obviously displeased by this development. He said the Justice had found nothing to charge her with, at least not at present. His expression suggested he thought the Justice’s move a foolish one. He said the girl had probably returned to her employer’s booth.

  “That may be the worse for her,” Joan said. “Pray the pig-woman does not lay the blame for the new atrocity at the girl’s door, or we m
ay still have murder in Smithfield.”

  Grotwell asked if Matthew would join them on their rounds of the fair since he knew Stubbs by sight. Matthew said that he would but first wanted to speak to the dead man’s investors. He

  asked Pullyver what would happen to the bear garden now that Ned Babcock was dead.

  “The rules of the partnership are clear on that point,” the greengrocer said smugly, shifting to a lawyer’s cant. “At either partner’s demise, the said partnership is dissolved, terminated, held for nought. The investors may then come forward to se' cure what is rightfully theirs, which is precisely what Mr. Chap' man and I intend to do. Samson, the bear garden, and all goods and appurtenances are at our disposal.”

  “But what of Mr. Babcock’s daughter?” Joan interrupted to ask, looking at the quiet girl with sudden sympathy. “Will she be left without means?”

  “Hardly,” replied Pullyver, casting a proprietary glance in Juliet’s direction. “She has consented to become my wife. After a decent interval, of course. She will be handsomely provided for, I assure you.”

  Pullyver smiled and seemed not to care that no flurry of con' gratulations was extended upon this announcement. CongratU' lations did not seem appropriate, given the circumstances, the bride'tO'be’s father sprawled in his gore not a dozen feet away and his killer on the rampage somewhere in the vicinity. Be' sides, no one seemed to like Pullyver, Joan thought. Not even the woman he was to marry.

  At that moment Justice Baynard, resplendent in a new suit purchased for the occasion of the Queen’s visit, stepped inside the tent, saw the bearward’s body, and uttered an oath of un' speakable vulgarity.

  • 20 •

  While Matthew and Joan were at the Smithfield bear garden puzzling over the murder of Ned Babcock, Sir Robert Cecil sat at his desk in his fine house of timber and brick on the Strand, puffing on a pipe full of rich, dark tobacco that filled the air of the spacious chamber with a pale blue haze. Before him, unat-tended, lay a sheaf of papers. There was a letter from the Span-ish ambassador complaining about the warlike attitude of certain English sea captains in the Caribbean. There was a re-cent edict of Parliament touching upon his own family fortunes (and therefore to be studied at length in a lawyerly way, with scrupulous concern for jots and tittles, commas and semicolons). There were also various memoranda and reports of Cecil’s European operatives, his eyes and ears in foreign courts. All these documents came under the heading of pressing business, but neither they nor the pleasure of his pipe could distract him from his chief preoccupation: the Queen’s visit to Bartholomew Fair and the savagery of Gabriel Stubbs. For but a few hours remained before he must act, and what was he to do?