A Murder by Any Name

by Suzanne M. Wolfe

  Nick took the pathetic little bunch of twigs and weeds, pretended to smell them appreciatively, then made a small bow and quickly turned away before she saw the raw pity on his face. Newgate Prison was not far away; he wondered if her mother or father were locked up and she had gone out to Spittal or Moor Fields early that morning to gather whatever was growing in order to make enough pennies to pay their miserable fine. He thought of Kat and how perilous it was for young girls on the streets of the capital. It was a miracle Kat had survived. He wondered what this girl’s chances of survival were. If starvation and cold didn’t get her, a pimp or pervert with a predilection for young flesh would.

  Most of the prisons were filled with vagrants rather than criminals. And there were plenty of them to choose from: Newgate, the Fleet, Bridewell, the King’s Bench, the Hole at the Counters, all within or near the city walls; and south of the river in Southwark, the Clink and the Marshalsea. And these were just the public jails. Many private stately homes had dungeons deep below their cellars where malefactors could languish for weeks without a hearing.

  It seemed that everywhere he looked there were beggars—former soldiers with legs or arms missing, desperate-eyed women clutching scrawny infants too weakened by hunger to cry; scores of children running in packs like wild dogs, some as young as three or four; men and women too old to work—an endless panoply of misery and despair. Some beggars were obviously tricksters, concealing bladders of pig’s blood with which they daubed themselves so passersby would pity them and open their purses, or mothers who pinched their children to make them cry. Most were simply destitute, and it was common to find a stiffened corpse lying in an alley after a hard freeze the previous night. Before Henry VIII had grabbed up the monasteries and convents when he declared himself Head of the Church in England, these great monasteries, which abounded in the city of London, had fed, clothed, employed, and healed the poor: Black- and Whitefriars, Clerkenwell and the Crutched Friars Priories; the hospitals founded by religious orders—St. Bartholomew’s; Bethlehem or Bedlam for the insane; St. Katherine’s Hospital near the Tower; St. Thomas in Bankside, close to where Nick lived. By snaffling up the lot, Henry VIII, that most covetous of kings, had ripped the guts out of the institutions of Catholic charity that for centuries had been the last hope of the poor, the sick, the old, and the very young. Nick wondered how long Elizabeth could go on ignoring the problem; not until there was a riot, he’d wager, and one of the sumptuous houses of a member of the Star Chamber was burned to the ground. Self-interest was always a good motivator.

  Bankside was an anomaly. Unlike the rest of London, it was openly criminal and catered exclusively to the entertainment needs of the larger metropolis on the north side of the river—theaters, bear- and bullbaiting rings, cock fights, prostitutes. Out of sight, out of mind was how the beadles, magistrates, and Queen’s Justices thought of it. As long as the cutpurses, harlots, smugglers, rapists, murderers, gamblers, and—especially beloved of the Puritans’ self-righteous ire—those suspiciously itinerant masters of disguise and deceit, actors, stayed on the south side of the Thames, they were left in relative peace. Stray over London Bridge to infect the rest of London, like rats bringing the plague, and that was another matter entirely. Whipping, branding, and mutilation were the least of the punishments that awaited them; more commonly, death by hanging; being hung in cages to slowly starve; or, if the crime were especially heinous, drawn on a hurdle, hanged by the neck, and then quartered while still alive.

  The severity of the punishment for capital crimes did not bother Nick; it was the harshness of punishment for crimes committed out of desperation, hunger, and poverty that he considered inhuman. Perhaps it was his friendship with Kat that had made him more aware of the law’s frightening blindness when it came to intent and motive: if she had been caught after stealing from the cook at the great house, she would have swung from the gallows or, at the very least, been mutilated by having her nose slit or cheek branded.

  As Justice of the Peace for the county, Nick’s father had held monthly assizes in the great hall, mostly handing out punishments in kind—a dozen eggs in compensation for stealing a chicken, a bolster of duck down for filching bedding from someone’s clothesline or window, a fortnight shoveling horse manure for the theft of oats. How could he punish people harshly for being hungry? he said. The old earl handed out humiliating but non-lethal punishments for more serious crimes: a day in the stocks for a fraudulent baker, pelted by his customers with stale bread—misery for him, great fun for them; a week wearing the Drunkard’s Cloak (an ale barrel with holes cut out for the head and arms) for a notorious drunk who beat his wife. His father once told the story of a woman who had been so incensed by her husband’s abuse, she had deliberately pushed him down a hill when he was wearing the Drunkard’s Cloak, and watched him roll into a muddy ditch, almost suffocating in the process. Her neighbors had stood by and applauded. The earl had refused to prosecute the wife when her husband brought suit against her for battery.

  “He didn’t lay hands on her again,” Nick’s father said.

  Nick had been largely oblivious to the harsher laws of the land, but since taking up residence in Bankside and coming to know Kat, Eli, and Rivkah, not to mention the denizens of his district, those criminals he greeted by name in the taproom of The Black Sheep or in the street—Pip, Black Jack, Henry, Joe, Will, Kit—he had come to put a human face on a whole class of undesirables. Kat had taught him what it meant to be despised as a profession; Eli and Rivkah, what it meant to be persecuted as a race. No longer insulated by the privilege of birth, he was more aware of the misery around him, more prone to anger at the great gulf between the haves and the much more numerous have-nots. Nick was convinced that poverty was the chief reason most turned to crime. For those who committed the worst crimes of all—murder, treason, sedition, rape—he had no mercy and considered no punishment too cruel. Determined to seek out the man who had murdered Cecily, he would be there to witness his terrible end. This he vowed.

  The face of the beggar girl rose in his mind’s eye. If Rivkah had been with him, she would have taken the girl home with her and gently questioned her until she got her whole sorry story. Unlike him, she would not have been content to merely hand over a coin—money he could well afford—and stroll on, conscience salved.

  He smiled briefly at the memory of their morning walk across the bridge, of her mental nimbleness in their confrontation with the apothecary, and of her small figure, absurdly dwarfed by his huge dog, striding purposefully down the road. Then he grew somber again. Despite their deep friendship, there remained an unbridgeable divide between them that was not merely one of class: she was a woman, he a man; she was a Jew, he a Christian, at least nominally; she was a Spaniard, a citizen of his country’s mortal enemy. He despaired of ever crossing that gap. That he yearned to do so was something he had long admitted to himself. His greatest fear was that she would learn he was spying on her country, her people, perhaps even believe he was spying on her and Eli, feigning friendship in order to get close to them. He couldn’t bear to think of her eyes clouding with mistrust, her prickly sense of humor becoming muted, her friendship withdrawn. And Eli? After John, he was Nick’s closest friend; Nick owed him his life. To lose brother or sister would be a kind of death.

  * * *

  Nick arrived in Cheapside and easily found the house of Sir Christopher Stokes, a four-story black and white timber and plaster construction with expensive mullioned windows on the upper floors—a sign of great wealth, as glass was exorbitantly taxed. It was situated just past Milk Street and before St. Mary le Bow, wedged between a goldsmith’s and a wig shop specializing in wigs made from human hair rather than horsehair. Although the wig shop had no royal emblem emblazoned across its lintel to indicate royal patronage, Nick thought it unlikely the Queen would advertise her baldness to the public at large. The frothy, red-curled confection perched on the head of a mannequin in the front window certainly reminded him of one he had recen
tly seen the Queen wearing. But no one in their right senses would be foolhardy enough to indicate by word or deed they knew the Queen’s hair was not her own. Nick wondered how such an offense would be punished: hanging, boiling in oil, stretching on the rack? Having to wear one of those ridiculous things on his head for a month would be punishment enough, he concluded with a grin. Like wearing one of his mother’s obnoxious lapdogs.

  Nick had never formally met Sir Christopher, only glimpsed him from time to time among the sycophants fawning over the Queen at court. Hard to miss with his expensive canary-yellow doublets (the cloth dyed with saffron, one of the costliest imported dyes on the market), slashed and double-slashed to reveal crimson and sky-blue silk underneath; his fashionably short cloak cut too far above the waist to be warm, and fussily thrown back over one shoulder; his immaculately trimmed beard pomaded to a point in the latest aspiring Sir Francis Drake fashion; his single drop earring. Nick thought him a popinjay, a mere flapdragon. He was constantly amazed at the torturous routes of family bloodlines, how they veered and shifted over time like errant rivers, sometimes snaking back on themselves to throw up a present-day copy of an ancient, worthless ancestor the family would have loved nothing better than to forget. Who would have thought that the fat, domineering, perpetually sour Countess of Berwick could have had such a lightweight for a nephew and heir? Nick was certain it was only his aunt’s patronage that had secured the man his post.

  The door to the town residence of Sir Christopher Stokes was made of solid, pitch-blackened English oak, banded with brass for security. Every house in this wealthy, predominantly mercantile neighborhood was similarly fitted. A brass knocker in the shape of a dolphin hung in the middle. Nick knocked loudly three times. A furious yapping, slightly muffled by the thickness of the door, ensued. Thinking of his mother’s lap dogs again, he prepared to have his ankles savaged by an absurd ball of fluff. For the second time that morning, he wished he’d brought Hector along.

  “Yeah?” a voice drawled through the crack in the door, managing to sound both bored and insolent. “We don’t want any, whatever it is.” The barking became hysterical.

  “I’m here on the Queen’s business,” Nick said, trying to hold his temper in check.

  “Bugger off!”

  Nevertheless, the door opened. Nick saw a white streak dart around the boy’s legs. “Sit,” he commanded, pointing a finger at it. The small dog abruptly sat, blinking up at him with a look very like astonishment. Nick stepped past it into the house. The boy’s look of insolence was replaced by one of profound admiration.

  “Who is it, Perkin?” a voice called querulously.

  Nick followed the voice, taking the stairs two at a time. Perkin, who should have been trying to pass him so he could announce him formally, followed behind. At the sound of his master’s voice, the dog left his place by the door and raced up the stairs giving Nick and Perkin a wide berth.

  “How did you do that?” Perkin asked, his voice filled with admiration. “He never obeys anyone.”

  “Practice.”

  The room Nick entered was richer by far than the Queen’s own study. A bonfire roared in an enormous stone fireplace, making the room stifling. A gray pall of smoke hung just beneath the ceiling, an ornate job of molded plaster and gilded heraldic shields that made the room claustrophobic and caused Nick to duck involuntarily. Thick tapestries in dark, funereal colors adorned the wall—a pity, Nick thought, as what he could see of them were made of rather fine linen-fold oak paneling. A thick layer of dust coated every surface, as if the room was hardly ever used.

  Reclining on a chaise longue lay the countess, a fur rug tucked around her legs, her ample bosoms rising like twin mounds of sweating dough. Perched on a chair opposite was her nephew, Sir Christopher, resplendent in bilious yellow, holding the tiny dog in the air and crooning to it. The dog hung listlessly between his hands, front paws drooping, but its moist, cataract-ridden eyes held a deeply malevolent glint, as if it were contemplating sinking its teeth into its master’s lily-white throat. And Sir Christopher was indisputably its master, as the countess wore an expression of deep disgust when her gaze fell on both nephew and dog alike. Sir Christopher kissed it tenderly on the nose and then gave a violent sneeze. Not surprising considering the dust. Nick could have written his name—nay, an entire sonnet—in the thick layer coating the sideboard. Nick felt sorry for the dog.

  “You’ve upset him,” Sir Christopher said, shooting Nick a malevolent look.

  “Oh, put a sock in it, Christopher,” his aunt barked. “And put that loathsome animal down.” She turned a minatory eye on Nick. “The Honorable Nicholas Holt,” she said. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

  At the mention of Nick’s title, Sir Christopher leapt to his feet, indicating Nick should take his chair. “Most honored,” he murmured, bowing obsequiously, the dog tucked beneath his arm like a fur muff.

  Nick eyed the dog hair liberally coating the chair Sir Christopher had just vacated, and took a stool. “Countess,” he said, ignoring her nephew, “I’ve been commanded by Her Majesty to investigate Cecily’s death.”

  At her beloved Queen’s name, the countess sat up straighter, but her face drained of color. Nick was surprised; he hadn’t known the old battle-ax was so filled with the milk of human kindness as to care so much about a junior lady-in-waiting who had only been at court a few weeks. But then again, Richard had told him she was overcome by grief, although, looking at her now, it seemed as if she were more out of sorts than grief-stricken. Notorious for her insistence on etiquette, she was probably more upset about the disruption caused by Cecily’s death than the actual fact of it.

  “That poor, poor child,” the countess murmured, unknowingly echoing the Queen’s words the night before. “Was she …?” Her fingers plucked at the rug fretfully as she searched for the right word. Her eyes fixed on Nick’s imploringly.

  “Interfered with?” he said, using a euphemism he hated, but choosing to take pity on her.

  She nodded.

  “No,” he replied. Not in the way you mean, he thought, blinking to remove the image of the wicked hole over Cecily’s heart.

  “Thank God.” The countess began to make the sign of the cross, then froze. Nick pretended he hadn’t seen. It was common for people the countess’s age to remember the time when the Catholic faith was freely practiced—the only difference then, that the king styled himself Head of the Church. Everything else had been the same: the Mass, the sacraments, incense, vespers, matins, the Latin liturgy. It wasn’t until Edward, his sickly son, mounted the throne under the radically Protestant sway of his uncles, the Seymours, that the changes in ritual began—the introduction of the Book of Common Prayer in the vernacular, the banning of the rosary and feast days of saints and other “Popish practices.” As a contemporary of the Queen, the countess would have been raised in the old faith, and those childhood habits were hard—nay, impossible—to break. Nick’s own mother, Agnes, was the same. He had often seen her fingers unconsciously moving in her lap, as if she were telling her beads. He had once asked her if she actively practiced the old faith.

  “That would be treason,” Agnes had replied.

  Only afterward did Nick realize that she hadn’t answered his question.

  “You saw her on the day she died, did you not?” Nick asked the countess gently.

  She nodded. “Yes. I did. She was on duty as usual. We were a bit shorthanded with Mary off sick and two others … indisposed.”

  Nick took her to mean something to do with female physiology such as menstruation or even pregnancy, a state not unheard of with ladies-in-waiting in a court surrounded by men. He steeled himself for a spate of euphemisms. His mother’s sister, Lady Herbert, was a great one for them. As boys, he and Robert had often been reprimanded for laughing and rolling their eyes when she was in full cry: “late” for deceased, as if the person had overslept and missed an appointment with his barber; or—Nick’s personal favorite and one that his aunt
repeatedly used to describe her dead husband—as having “joined the Choir eternal.”

  “Rubbish,” his mother had once snapped. “Reginald was tone deaf.”

  “Did you notice anything unusual about her behavior that day?” Nick asked the countess.

  She frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Anything out of the ordinary. Did she receive a message from anyone? Did her mood change at all?” He was trying to confirm his suspicion that Cecily had received the note on the morning she died.

  The countess looked down, the folds of her double chin bunching up over her lace ruff. Nick noticed her fingers were still plucking at the rug. At last she raised her head.

  “Cecily was a shy girl,” she said. “She hadn’t been with us for long.”

  Nick waited patiently.

  “She seemed as usual in the morning when we dressed the Queen. Before chapel,” she explained. “But after we returned from chapel to the royal apartments she seemed …”

  “Yes?”

  The countess frowned. “Well, different somehow.”

  Nick tried to remain patient at the slow trickle of information. Few civilians thought like spies, paying attention to peoples’ moods, the way they said things, noticing small changes in routine or behavior. “In what way?” he prodded.

  “She seemed happier, excited even. And she asked to go to the privy right after we returned.” The countess frowned again, and Nick briefly felt sorry for the ladies-in-waiting under her dominion if a simple request to relieve themselves was considered a crime.

  “No,” she said, as if reading his mind, “you don’t understand. She had gone right before chapel and it wasn’t her—” She broke off abruptly and flushed. “Monthly course,” she said finally. The countess glared at Nick for making her speak of such matters.

  The note, Nick thought. He felt a brief flicker of triumph that his suspicions had been confirmed. Someone passed it to her in chapel that morning, and she had later excused herself so she could read it. Deliberately making his voice casual, he asked if the countess had seen anything out of the ordinary before, during, or after the service. He was particularly concerned with the time after the service.