A Murder by Any Name

by Suzanne M. Wolfe

  A huge black shadow materialized from under the eaves of the tavern. A hand, which had been hovering over a dagger, dropped to its side when the owner recognized Nick.

  “Ralph,” Nick said, opening the door to the tavern. “You and the lads come inside and get warm.” He had long ago given up trying to refuse to sell Johnnie and his underage crew ale after Black Jack had sent one of his heavies around to “have a little word,” as he euphemistically put the threat of retribution if Nick refused to “let the lad wet his whistle once in a while.” The rate he was going, Johnnie was on his way to becoming a full-blown toper by the time his voice broke.

  Ralph didn’t reply. Now that Nick posed no threat to his charge, he had lost interest in him. Nick didn’t take it personally. Everyone knew Ralph was dumb both in speech and in wits. Built like the side of a proverbial barn and reputed to be the best knife-man in Bankside—no mean feat in an area filled with violent criminals—Ralph had the mental age of a five-year-old but also the pure devotion of a young child. He shambled behind Johnnie like a trained bear and meekly did whatever he was told as long as it was Johnnie who was giving the orders. Everyone else he either ignored or murdered. Nick would have felt sorry for him had Ralph’s habitual expression not been one of blissful contentment, admittedly a little unnerving when he was coming at you with a knife.

  Nick walked into a warm fug and tremendous noise. He stood blinking on the threshold. Packed with bodies in varying stages of thaw, cloaks steaming before the fire, puddles collecting around the boots of those newly arrived, the taproom of The Black Sheep was a startling contrast to the ghostly world he had just left, as if he had been rudely awakened from an enchantment.

  A man staggered over and clapped him on the shoulder. “If ale be the food of life, drink up,” he slurred, raising his beaker and spilling most of it down his front.

  “Hello, Will,” Nick said. “Bit early to be pissed as a newt, isn’t it?”

  Will grinned blearily. “I’m celebrating,” he said.

  “I can see that.”

  “Phil Henslowe’s just told me he’s going to build a playhouse in Bankside the year after next,” Will said. “He’s calling it The Rose.” His enormous, lustrous, almost feminine brown eyes shone with delight. “I wanted him to call it The Globe,” he said, opening his arms wide and spilling the rest of his drink, “seeing as all the world’s a stage. But Phil’s a philistine.” He paused, swaying, a small frown puckering his hugely domed forehead.

  Then he laughed. “Philistine. Get it?”

  Nick nodded wearily. He was cold, tired, hungry, dirty, and perplexed. Tomorrow, if Sir Thomas continued to refuse to talk, he would have to put the man to torture. The last thing he wanted tonight was to trade witty puns with a bladdered playwright.

  “Congratulations,” Nick said. He deposited his inebriated friend on a stool before Will could fall over, then pushed his way through the crowd to the bar, where Maggie and Henry were filling beakers from two large barrels set on the back counter, as fast as they could. Jane, the baby, was sleeping peacefully in a large laundry basket behind the counter. Nick envied her ability to sleep through such a racket, but then the tavern was all she had ever known. She would probably wake up screaming if the tavern suddenly fell silent. In between orders, her mother was taking money, mopping spills off the bar, and fielding wandering hands. Maggie’s cheeks were rosy from exertion, and her hair was plastered to her face. Henry merely looked sullen, his usual adolescent expression.

  “Tell John we could do with a hand,” she said, peering around the row of shoulders hunched along the bar, looking for her husband.

  Nick broke the unwelcome news that John was still at Whitehall.

  “We need him here,” she said crossly. “It’s bedlam. Lucky we got in a delivery of barrels before the snow started. Even so, if it goes on like this, we’ll run out by the end of the evening.”

  Nick unbuckled his sword belt and vaulted over the bar. He hadn’t planned on helping out—he would have preferred to bunk off to Kat’s for a bath, preferably with her in it—but he couldn’t, in all conscience, leave Maggie and Henry to cope alone on a night like this. His only hope was that the tavern wouldn’t become a doss house if they were snowed in overnight. He didn’t fancy a bunch of rowdy drunks sleeping it off, then waking to pounding hangovers the following morning. And with John absent, he didn’t like to leave Maggie to the less than chivalrous propositions of the tavern’s clientele. The drunker they became, the more amorously inclined and the less likely to take no for an answer, even if Maggie’s version was a swift knee in the groin. Oddly, this only seemed to inflame them further, perhaps because they were used to being bullied by their wives at home.

  Later in the evening, three hours after nightfall, the snow stopped falling, and much to Nick’s relief, the tavern began to empty out. The snow was over a foot high by that time, but as most of the customers lived locally, they opted to walk home. Some of the less fortunate were fetched by irate wives, who glared at Nick and Maggie as if they were the ones responsible for stealing food out of their children’s mouths, rather than the shame-faced sot they now held firmly by the collar.

  At last the tavern was empty except for Will, who was passed out in the rushes in front of the fire, his head on Hector’s flank. Nick draped a cloak over him after banking down the fire for the night.

  “Henry and I can manage now,” Maggie said, collecting empties and stacking them on a huge tray she held expertly with one hand and balanced on her hip. “You look done in.”

  Nick kissed her on the cheek, punched Henry playfully on the arm, which elicited a grudging smile, and staggered up the back stairs to his bedchamber. He was stone-cold sober, but weaving with fatigue, so exhausted he might well have been in his cups. He had managed to stuff a few handfuls of bread into his mouth in between shouts for more ale but was too tired to eat more and too tired to wash. He kicked his door shut and fell facedown on the bed with his clothes on.

  He was woken by the sound of shouts and smell of burning. Instantly, he was on his feet. Thanking God he had not undressed, nor even taken off his boots, Nick snatched up his sword. Fire was every Londoner’s nightmare. In the distance he heard the first clang of the bell from St. Mary Overie, rousing the neighborhood and bidding them come fight a common enemy. Hector was baying, an eerie, mournful sound. Nick’s first thought was that the tavern was on fire, but when he careened down the stairs into the taproom, there was no sign of burning. Indeed, there was no sign of Will, Maggie, Henry, or Hector. The front door to the tavern stood open, letting in the chill night air.

  Grabbing a bucket from beside the fireplace, Nick rushed out. He turned left, following the sounds past the Bear Garden, now deserted. Just beyond he saw a seething mass of bodies luridly lit from behind by the burning roof of a house.

  “Rivkah!” he cried and broke into a run. As he neared, he was able to make out the shouts coming from the mob.

  “Filthy Jews!” one man shouted, a burning brand raining sparks down over the heads of the crowd as he waved it to and fro in the air.

  “Burn the vermin!” another man bellowed. There was an ugly cheer.

  Elbowing his way through the crowd, he saw Rivkah’s face at the window, a white terrified mask. Nick drew his sword and, standing on the front step, pointed it at the crowd. Hector leapt up on the step next to him, baring his teeth. “Stand back,” he yelled. “The first man to come any closer is a dead man.”

  There were a few jeers, but some of the men in the back began to slink away. To his relief, Nick didn’t recognize any of them. It would have broken his heart if Eli and Rivkah’s neighbors and patients had turned on them. Judging from their clothes and advanced state of inebriation, he reckoned they were sailors come ashore from a ship docked at St. Mary’s Queen Dock hard by the Great Stone Gate of London Bridge. The question was: How had they known where Eli and Rivkah lived? Nick filed that away for another time. Right now, all he could think of was how to get R
ivkah and Eli out of their home alive.

  Feeling for the door behind him, his sword still pointed in front of him, he opened it. “Stay,” he commanded Hector, and backed inside, covering his face with the edge of his cloak. He could hear Hector scrabbling and whining at the door.

  The tiny, neat kitchen was full of smoke, but no flames that he could see. He could just make out Rivkah in the gray murk. Her hair was wild about her face, and she was dressed in a long linen nightdress. She had a cloth held against her nose and mouth.

  “Where’s Eli?” Nick shouted.

  Rivkah pointed up the ladder leading to the attic. “The roof is burning,” she said. Her face was streaked with soot, her mouth trembling, but it was her eyes that stopped Nick cold—they were the eyes of an animal caught in a trap, rolling, white-orbed, crazed with fear.

  Now Nick understood. Her home in Salamanca had burned down, torched by such a mob as this. She had tried to save her baby sister and failed.

  Wanting nothing more than to gather her in his arms, instead he took her roughly by the wrist and dragged her toward the back door. “Out,” he said.

  She struggled to break free. “Eli!” she screamed. “I’m not leaving him.”

  “OUT!” Then, relenting: “I’ll get him, Rivkah. I swear.” He pushed her through the back door and locked it to prevent her from reentering. He heard her beating on it, cursing him in Spanish.

  At that moment there were shouts from outside. Someone howled in pain. The sound of footsteps running away. Risking a quick glance through the window, he saw one of Black Jack Sims’s bullyboys laying about him with a cudgel. Kat’s man Joseph was wading through the crowd, lifting men up above his head and tossing them farther back into the street as if they were so much firewood. It was the first time Nick had seen him in action as the Terror of Lambeth, and he was impressed. One sailor was lying in the snow, a dark pool spreading around his head; the others were backing off, eyeing the crime lord’s ruffians warily, recognizing professionals when they saw them. Hector had a sailor by the leg and was shaking him back and forth as if he were a rag doll. One brave soul darted forward, took the prone man by the ankles, and dragged him back toward the docks. Hector let go of the leg, and its owner limped away, whimpering.

  “Let them go,” Black Jack ordered. Despite his advanced age, he was propping a ladder up against the house. Nick heard Maggie’s voice calling for buckets and a human chain to be made from the river. He glimpsed her holding Jane tightly against her shoulder. Scanning the crowd, he recognized Kat and some of her girls, Master Baker and his wife, Harry the Tinker, Will, and Henry, all carrying buckets.

  “Use the snow,” Black Jack bellowed from the top of the ladder. “The river will take too long.” People hurried to fill their buckets from the drifts in the street and began to pass them up the ladder.

  Wasting no more time, Nick climbed to the loft. He could just make out Eli pulling down great hanks of smoldering thatch with a fire hook and stamping on them. Thank Christ for the snow, Nick thought as he joined him.

  “Mouse?” Eli shouted.

  “She’s safe.”

  “Blessed be He,” Eli muttered.

  * * *

  In the end, it was the snow that saved the house and Eli and Rivkah’s lives. The thatch was so sodden that the firebrand that had been tossed onto the roof had failed to spread. As it was, the house was uninhabitable until a new thatch could be put on, and Harry the Tinker said he had a mate—Tom the Thatcher, inevitably—who would do it.

  They were gathered in the taproom of The Black Sheep, he and Eli and Rivkah coughing from the smoke, all cold and dirty. Henry had made up the fire and Maggie had set a big cauldron of wine on it. She was ladling the hot wine into pewter tankards and passing them around. Rivkah was crouched on a stool near the fire, wrapped in a sheepskin coverlet from Maggie’s bed; her face was white and still and blank. She had not said a word since Nick had reunited her with Eli after they had put out the fire. Eli had his arm around her shoulders, holding her close. Nick caught his eye, and he shook his head minutely as if to say, She’ll be all right. Just give her time.

  “You must come back to the house with me,” Kat was saying to them. “We’ve got plenty of room.”

  “Thank you,” Eli said. Rivkah did not respond, but just sat staring dully into the fire.

  To take his mind off his anxiety for her, Nick turned to Black Jack Sims. “Thanks for lending a hand.” The man’s quick thinking about using the snow had probably saved the rest of the house from going up.

  Black Jack almost smiled but then caught himself just in time. “Think nothing of it,” he said grandly. “I was just protecting my investment. I own the house.”

  “That explains it then,” Nick said, playing along. He happened to know that Black Jack thought the world of Eli and Rivkah, which was only partly due to the fact that he was a martyr to gout and swore that only their physic gave him any relief. But Nick also knew that Black Jack regarded them as kindred spirits—both he and they being exiles from the law. That he had probably broken all Ten Commandments numerous times had never seemed to occur to him.

  A milky dawn was breaking when people began to drift off to their homes. Nick watched as Kat took charge of Rivkah and, arm about her, guided her out the door. Kat glanced back at him over her shoulder and shrugged. Nick could see she was as worried as he was.

  “I’m going back to bed,” Nick said, stretching.

  “Me too,” Henry said, yawning ostentatiously.

  Maggie announced that, since she was already up, she might as well stay up, and that went for Henry as well. His face fell. Nick winked at him as he made his way to the stairs.

  CHAPTER 17

  Bankside

  Nick slept hard and woke much later than he had intended. At first he was confused as to where he was, the eerie white light and strange silence outside so alien to the usual gloom of a winter’s morning and ear-splitting racket of Bankside going about its business just below his window. He threw back the covers, then immediately regretted it and almost dove back under again. He had forgotten to close the shutters the night before, and the room was freezing. Hopping from foot to foot, he dragged on his clothes, which stank of smoke from the night before; stuffed a clean shirt and hose into a leather satchel; grabbed his sword belt and boots; and stumbled down the stairs.

  “I’m off to Kat’s,” he told Maggie as he pulled on his boots.

  Maggie gave him a sidelong glance as she poured warm ale into a cup and handed it to him. “You’ll need your strength, then,” she said, cutting him a wedge of cheese and pushing it and a small loaf of bread toward him.

  “For your information, I’m going for a long, hot soak,” Nick said, buckling on his sword, downing the ale in one gulp, and grabbing the food to eat on the way. “Be back in an hour if anyone wants me.”

  “Make sure Kat washes all the naughty bits,” Maggie called after him as he left.

  * * *

  In addition to the peevishness provoked by Maggie’s comment, the events of the night before had dampened Nick’s ardor and hopes that Kat would join him in the bathhouse. Just as well, as Kat gave him a chaste peck on the cheek, thrust a towel and bar of soap at him, and left him to it. Kat seemed distracted, Nick thought, as he submerged himself in blessedly hot water and shut his eyes.

  He found out the reason when, fully dressed in clean clothes, newly shaved, and smelling pleasantly of the lemon oil he had poured liberally into the bath water, he sauntered into Kat’s bedroom. He found Kat and Lizbeth, one of the girls from the brothel, tending a woman who was lying in Kat’s bed, looking more dead than alive if the parchment of her face and the unnatural stillness of her repose were anything to go by. The room was stiflingly hot and close, like the bathhouse he had just left. A cauldron of boiling water was steaming over the fire, and rags with blood on them were soaking in a bowl. From an old wooden cradle with a carved hood, next to the bed, came snuffling sounds and a faint mewling. Nick peer
ed in and saw a tiny scrap of a baby with a newborn’s red, scrunched-up face, impossibly small fists bunched up under its chin, its scrawny little limbs tightly bound in linen swaddling bands. He leaned down and offered the baby his pinkie and was astonished anew, as he had been with each of his newborn nephews and nieces, at how strongly the infant gripped his finger.

  “How is she?” Nick asked, understanding now that the corpse-like figure in the bed, little more than a girl now that he had moved closer and could see better, must be the poor woman on whom Eli had performed the Caesarian the day before.

  “She’s alive,” Kat replied. “Just.”

  “And the baby?” Nick asked, rocking the cradle with his toe.

  “Surprisingly robust, considering the poor little mite was breeched and taken untimely from the womb,” Kat said, looking down at him, her face briefly softening. “Poor little mite,” she repeated quietly to herself. “If he survives, it looks like he’ll be motherless.”

  “He’ll have you,” Nick said. Kat had never given birth as far as he knew, had never even fallen pregnant, very unusual for a woman of her profession. He knew that Rivkah was her personal physician and would never discuss her patients’ ailments with anyone, except perhaps her brother if she needed advice. And although she had never said anything directly, Nick knew, from a few things Kat had let slip over the years, that the way she had been violently and repeatedly raped in the brothel when she was a girl had somehow damaged her inside. Now she was past childbearing age. From the way she allowed her girls to keep their babies when they fell pregnant—most madams would employ a wise woman to get rid of them with potions and other, more hideous, means—Nick was certain the lack of a child of her own was one of her greatest sorrows.

  “What’s his name?” Nick asked.

  “He hasn’t got one yet. If Emily recovers, she can christen him. Otherwise.…” Kat shrugged and turned back to the woman on the bed and began wiping her forehead with a cloth she dipped in cold water from a bowl on the bedside table.