The rage that had filled John earlier had been born of pity. Now he felt the piercing sting of jealous passion. She had thrown her duty aside and married a common man when he, John, had –
“I’ll want to talk to you again,” The Sergeant said, disturbed by the gleam he saw in John’s eye. “You stay with him, Jeremiah.”
John and Jeremiah were left alone by the Fleet – except for the old crone. Now she grasped John’s arm with her claw-like hand. “Am I to get nothing?” she whined. “What about me compensation? I’ve lost a good piece of cloth and all for a good deed. Pah.” She spat on the ground.
“Get off me,” John pushed her away. “Someone is dead and all you can think of is money . . .”
John remembered little of the next few hours. They stumbled into an inn on Holborn, later met up with some of the King’s Players. Odd fragments remained. A heated argument about the position of the sun and the planets, a satirical review of the newest play at Blackfriars Theatre, drunken speculation on the likelihood of further Popish plots against King James. Anything but think of that once beautiful girl, now a hideous cadaver at the mercy of the Surgeon, worse to think of her as a defiled woman . . . Somewhere along the way he lost Jeremiah and at last came to consciousness again sitting beside the Thames. It was dark now and the river was filled with the bobbing lights of the lanterns on the boats of the watermen as they ferried passengers across to the Globe Theatre, and the lurid pleasures of Southwark. Tears began to course down his cheeks. He realized they were not just for Meg, but for himself and the innocence he had lost today and he hated himself for that weakness.
He’d been sick with love for her for most of the previous year, 1605, ever since he first saw her at their Christmas masques of 1604 celebrating the succession of James from Scotland to the throne of England, thus uniting the two crowns. Her eyes had held such a sparkle of mischief and she had a ready smile. Her hair was decorated with tiny pearls and her neat slippered feet trod delicately through pavane and galliard alike. Who wouldn’t fall in love with such perfection?
It was more than that for him though. He had enjoyed talking to her and was never happier than when she was present. His desire had burned in him at night, tossing and turning with physical fever. She was constantly in his thoughts. But he never once entertained the idea of courting her. He knew that, despite his education to the highest level at Merchant Taylor’s School, his father’s increasing wealth, his own small part in the world of theatre and legal affairs, he would never be considered a fit match for her. She was of noble birth and her duty lay wherever her father directed. But instead, instead –
He clutched his head in his hands and shook it in jealous anguish. She had given herself to someone more lowly than him. She may as well have painted her face and walked the streets. This was not the way of the world. She had destroyed the right order of society and thus threatened its security. The edge of his notebook pressed sharply against his chest. He reached inside his doublet and took it out. The pages were filled with extracts, thoughts, quotations. Sidney, Shakespeare, Jonson – anything he heard or read that struck him of substance, or a happy sequence of words. John Donne’s love poems were recorded here, they’d struck such a chord with him. And he’d written sonnets to Margaret, poured out his emotions and private passions in these pages.
Feverishly he scrabbled through the book, ripped out the sonnets he’d written, tore them into pieces and threw them into the sweetly flowing river.
She was dead and with her his entire trust in womankind. He paused, thinking of his own Nell. Yes, he loved her but in a different way. And she was not womankind, she was – Nell, the ordinary, the everyday who shared his confidence and returned it. His feelings for Margaret had been quite different. Intense and overpowering.
He stood up, swaying slightly. He could hear the lap of the water and the cries of the watermen. There was a slight tang of salt on the easterly breeze, he could taste it on his lips. Alcohol still warmed his blood even though he was without his hat and cloak.
He looked down at the dark water. To kill Meg, someone else must have felt such overpowering feelings too. Could Richard, his friend and her brother, have killed her to avenge the family honour? His father even? Or what of this husband in the clandestine marriage she’d undertaken, surely no genuine marriage in the eyes of the world. He pictured a lumpen lout digging turnips in a field and returning home to her where she sat in a hut beside a tiny fire. Perhaps she’d changed her mind and wanted to leave so he had killed her. He’d picked up what lay closest to hand, a length of rope, snuffed the life out of her and then tossed her in the Fleet Ditch.
That was the one image he could not shake. Meg clawing at the cord crying and struggling as her breath was slowly cut off. Or had she met her end with quiet acceptance? And whose image had been the last imprinted on those once sparkling eyes?
As always the thought of the last moments before death when a man’s senses and thoughts must be heightened beyond anything he’d ever known, to be almost preternatural, made John’s heart beat faster, excited his temperament. Restlessly he began to pace up and down. He had to know what her final moments had been like before her soul had been wrenched from her body. A terror or an ecstasy?
Restlessly he began to pace and a new question gripped him. Why had Margaret come to London from Uxbridge, and had her husband been with her? Perhaps she had run away and was the victim of a thief or cutpurse who had carried his job too far. And Uxbridge – there was something there . . . but no, he could not recall it.
Almost without knowing it he found he was retracing his steps and heading for the area of Westminster and Richard’s lodgings. At this early hour of the night there were plenty of revellers abroad and light from torches and windows. But the flickering shadows that were cast seemed to scurry around him and to follow him, like so many rats. The time is indeed out of joint, he thought to himself, as he’d heard said.
John hesitated on Richard’s doorstep for a moment. They had grown apart, mainly because John had wanted to distance himself from his hopeless passion for Margaret. Perhaps his old friend would not be pleased to see him, especially in his dishevelled state. But it was only right he should give his respects and besides, he was driven now by the need to know, to uncover what had led Margaret to her untimely death.
An elderly serving man opened the door eventually to his knock.
“Master Richard is keeping vigil,” he was informed. “He could not have the body in the house. She is in the crypt of St Simon’s on the corner of the street there.”
Candlelight guided him down the cold stone steps of the small church. He prepared himself for the sight he would see. Her body lay on a wooden bier in a shroud, hands folded across her chest her face exposed, looking very small but in contrast her pregnancy even more visible, thrusting itself into their consciousness. Richard was alone, kneeling at her side praying. He sprang up when John entered and as he came to embrace him John saw the signs of strain and grief in his expression.
“Thank you for coming,” he said. “Father and Mother would not come. Their disgust and anger are still too great. But look at her, John, she was my little sister and, despite everything, I cannot bear to –” He broke off and buried his face in his hands.
John crouched down beside the bier and for the first time looked at her fully. Her skin was an odd bluish grey and coins had been placed on her closed lids. Her fine red-gold hair had been combed out and spread around her head – something like Ophelia’s as she floated down the river, he thought. He resisted the urge to plunge his hands into the hair and touch for one time the object that he had been forbidden when she was alive. The slumbering rage kindled to life again. How could she have been so wilful and turned her back on duty, on everything she’d been raised to uphold? What had corrupted her spirit so? His gaze travelled down to her neck where a gap in her clothing revealed the bruising on her throat. Rage warred with pity and grief in his heart. This time he did touch her. So cold!
Like wax. He traced the line of the bruise. There was something odd here–
“What are you doing? Leave her be.” Richard’s hand clamped on his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” John said. “How could someone have done this?”
“The Surgeon said that no other violence has been done to her. Her death was mercifully quick. Thanks be to God.”
“What happened, Richard? The last time I saw her she was dancing and laughing – we all were.”
Richard led him to a bench at the side of the room, collapsing wearily on to it.
“I should never have let her go,” he said. “I should have been firmer with her, forced her to stay and carry out father’s wishes. It was my parents’ choice of husband. Lord Neville has estates in Norfolk and Huntingdon. Lordsake, I don’t know what she had against him. Wealthy and with a position in the King’s household too.”
“I’ve seen Lord Neville. He must be twenty years older than she, but an active man. He funded one of the expeditions to Virginia in the New World.” Tall and slim, fashionably dressed, a man expert at politicking and intriguing at court, John recalled.
“Well, she wouldn’t have him.” Richard sighed. “My father had arranged the match but she insisted she was too young, though she was nearly seventeen already. She persuaded him to allow her a year’s grace. He agreed, but only if she went to our aunt in the country.”
“Jeremiah told me that her eye fell upon a yeoman there and they secretly married.”
“I’ve never seen father so angry as when the news came that she’d been so disobedient and had left my aunt’s household to go and live with this man. He disowned her on the spot and her name has not been mentioned since – until these last few days.”
Both men contemplated the dead body.
“Why had she come to London then?”
Richard shook his head. “This is the worst part of it,” he said softly. “She wanted reconciliation and forgiveness for the sake of her unborn child. She wanted that child to be allowed its inheritance. ‘Why should it suffer because of me?’ she said. Mother and Father refused to receive her. She and that man were lodging near St Paul’s, she told me.”
“You agreed to meet her.”
“I refused at first but then – I saw her two days ago. A lifetime ago.”
“What happened to her after that?”
“I don’t know. I said I would speak to our parents on her behalf, but the right moment had not arrived. And now it’s too late.”
John had kept quiet vigil with Richard for a while and then, exhausted, went to his own bed and fell into oblivion for a few hours. At dawn, he was awoken by a hammering on his door.
“Go away,” he groaned, turning his face to the wall.
“Master Webster, Sergeant Lightbody demands your presence. You are to come at once.”
At those words the events of the previous day came unwelcome into his mind. “Then give me time to wash,” he replied, “and I’ll come with you.”
He was escorted to Sergeant Lightbody’s domain near London Bridge.
“You managed to escape from Constable Smith yesterday. Where did you go after that?”
John was about to protest then saw Jeremiah’s downcast expression
“We did become separated. Then I joined Richard in his vigil for his sister.”
“The sister you want me to believe you have neither seen nor talked to for over six months. Or perhaps, Master Webster, you have been using your power over words to send her love letters, arranged a tryst, then killed her in passionate jealousy,” Light-body sneered.
John managed to swallow his temper. “As you well know, she and her husband came seeking reconciliation with her parents.”
“I still want to know how you ‘happened’ to be on the wagon that fetched her dead body, and how you ‘happened’ to recognize her. This isn’t the first time we’ve met. Your fists and temper have brought you here before.”
And if you’d had your way I’dv’e been rotting in Newgate or Bridewell Prisons, never to be seen again, John thought. He went on the attack.
“Have you thought about where this husband, William Mantle, is from?”
“From Uxbridge. What of it?”
“I was told he worked at a great house there and the only one I know of is Morecrofts, home to Catesby, co-conspirator of Mr Fawkes. Supposing Mantle was a Catholic sympathizer and has been threatened to stay silent, but Margaret refused? Or perhaps he was forcing her to become a Catholic and she threatened to betray him.”
Lightbody snorted. “And suppose men were living on the moon? Put him in with Mantle and see if he’s more prepared to talk later.”
Jeremiah took John’s arm and led him to the room that served as a cell.
“He doesn’t really think you’ve any part in her murder,” he whispered. “He’s angry because Mantle has a strong alibi which we are trying to check now. If it holds up, then all we can say is it was a passing cutpurse or vagabond.”
John was indeed familiar with the room he entered. Rough stone walls, a bench along either side, one small barred window. His heart began to pound at the thought of meeting the man Margaret had betrayed everyone for.
A figure lay curled up on the floor, face to the wall. “Get up,” he said thickly, resisting the urge to kick him. “Get up, Mantle, and face me.”
The hunched figure stirred after a moment then climbed to its feet, only to sit down instantly on a bench, as if his legs were too weak to hold him. He stared dully at the floor. John saw nothing but a young lad. Fresh-faced, smooth-skinned, handsome in his own way but nothing out of the ordinary. He could only have been a year or two older than Margaret.
“Mantle, I’m sorry for your loss.” The words came out unbidden. The lad raised his face briefly and John saw his lips were cracked and swollen. He banged on the door. “Ho, Jeremiah, fetch some small beer and bread.”
“I – couldn’t eat or drink,” William said quietly.
“You must. Would Meg want to see you this way? Of course not. You’ve got to fight back.” Jeremiah arrived and thrust a plate and two flagons at John, then locked the door again. John sat beside William and fed him as if he was a child and held the flagon to his lips, urging him to drink.
“You loved her,” he said.
“She – we did not mean any harm,” William said. “We wanted to be together but we knew our families would forbid it.”
“Who performed the marriage, some hedge priest?”
“Oh no,” William looked more animated. “We are no recusants, but non-conformists, another reason we knew we would be forbidden each other. I have a cousin who is ordained and persuaded him.”
John drained his own flagon and set it on the floor. Mantle had no connection with Fawkes after all. “I cannot think of any reason she was killed,” he said.
William gazed at the floor and answered in a monotone. “She met a misadventure.”
“True.” John was silent. His emotions were mixed. He wanted to like William, but his jealousy was still a barrier between them. “How did you live?” he made himself ask.
Suddenly the floodgates opened and the lad talked of Margaret, of how they fell in love, how they both shared a passion for horticulture and how they planned a future together creating new gardens. He repeated himself, rambling, until abruptly the door was opened.
“You can go, both of you.” Jeremiah brought the welcome news. “The lighterman you were working for down at the docks has been found and confirms your story. He was earning some money by labouring for a few hours,” he explained to John.
William did not move. “I have nowhere to go,” he said. “You may as well hang me.”
John grabbed him under an arm and pulled him up. “You will go to Richard’s lodgings and see to your wife’s funeral,” he said roughly. “You know where he lives. Now go.” He gave him a push in the back and the lad stumbled away.
“He says Mistress Margaret Mantle’s death was a misadventure – she was
attacked, found to have no money, and killed for it. That is Sergeant Lightbody’s conclusion,” Jeremiah said.
“But I can tell, John, that you are still troubled,” Nell murmured from where she nestled against his chest. She turned her head to look up at him and he saw anxiety in her eyes. He knew that with her he could be honest and speak the truth as he saw it.
“Sergeant Lightbody decided that Margaret was the victim of a vagabond who killed her either for sport or to make sure she cannot later identify him. Which, the Sergeant neither knows nor cares. He has found an answer that satisfies her family.”
“You don’t agree with him.” Nell wriggled to sit up beside him, leaning back against the pillows and pulling the sheet up modestly. “You must have reason.”
“For one thing, her husband said that she wasn’t carrying any coins and they had sold all their last remaining jewellery – save for that one item she still carried which her mother had passed on to her. And it was still on her person.”
“A cutpurse wouldn’t know that she wasn’t carrying any money, would he? Perhaps he was disturbed before he found the jewel she wore. Or perhaps she turned and saw his face. Perhaps he was angry at being baulked of his money and killed her for that.”
“I hadn’t thought of that, my clever Nell. It could be so if only –”
“If only what? What else did you see?”
“The bruise around her neck. It wasn’t a single line. At regular intervals there was a larger blotch.”
Nell shuddered. “The poor woman. I know she put herself outside the protection of her family but, all the same – do you mean he used his hands first, before the cord?”
John shook his head. “No. I’ve heard tell of this before, in my law studies. I am sure it was a knotted rope, the sort that hired assassins use.”
“An assassin? I thought the Italians used their daggers.”
“This way there is no blood.”
“But who would hire someone to kill her? She no longer had money or position and was soon to have a baby. Her husband – that’s who you think, isn’t it? To rid himself of this burden he no longer wanted and could not afford to keep.”
The Mammoth Book of Jacobean Whodunnits Page 10