Medi-Evil 1

by Paul Finch

  “Except fear.”

  “Fear and fury. The two go hand-in-hand down Southwark way.”

  Urmston gave a contemptuous sniff. “Well … I don’t suppose we can let the lives of a few downtrodden women threaten the stability of the capital.”

  Walsingham regarded him coolly. “With the country torn stem to stern ’twixt Catholic and Protestant, we can ill afford outbreaks of major disorder, Robert … especially in London. Mary Stuart waits in the wings. Her supporters need only the slightest excuse.”

  Urmston nodded. He appreciated the danger of course, but it was enjoyable to see the Secretary of state so discomforted. “So … what exactly do you propose?”

  “Well … somewhat to my astonishment, the Privy Council’s first response – that a four-hundred pound reward be posted, has so far been ignored. I therefore propose something more radical; namely, that one man in my employ, needless to say the most efficient of my agents, be brought into this business, presented with all the facts and commissioned to bring the villain to justice by any means possible.”

  “And if he fails?” Urmston asked.

  “He mustn’t.”

  “But if he does?”

  “He mustn’t!” Walsingham said again, in a graver tone than his agent had ever heard him use before.

  *

  When he returned home that afternoon, Urmston went directly to the solar. It was a smaller, darker room than the parlour, but nevertheless the part of his house he inhabited the most. In here were his shelves of books and maps, his measuring instruments, his ornate globe, his oaken desk laden down with papers and diaries. A good fire was already roaring in the grate, and a moment later Urmston’s manservant, John Kingsley, came in, bringing his master a gown and slippers, and a small repast of bread, cheese and a tankard of beer.

  While Urmston ate, he related the events of the morning and the new mission set before him. Kingsley, a middle-aged fellow, with a head of shaggy grey hair, but broad shoulders and ruddy journeyman’s hands, remained taciturn, though even he was mildly surprised by the day’s outcome.

  “That’s a tall order, my lord.”

  “Isn’t it?” Urmston replied. “I suppose I should be flattered.”

  “Has his lordship granted special powers?” the servant wondered.

  Urmston nodded, and indicated a small scroll, tied with a ribbon, now lying on his desk. “I requested a warrant to question, search and detain any person I saw fit, in connection with the case, and he already had one prepared. Bearing my name … damn his infernal cheek!”

  “At least it should prove a worthy chase, my lord.”

  “His words too,” Urmston said thoughtfully. “For once, we pursue a miscreant whose crimes aren’t born of idealism, whose heinous deeds are a concern to us all whatever our persuasion.” Urmston looked round at his servant. “His lordship said that to catch this villain might even help salve my conscience … for all those other poor wretches I’ve sent to their fate.”

  Kingsley raised an eyebrow. “He called them ‘poor wretches’?”

  Urmston gave a bitter chuckle. “Not quite.”

  “Well, at least he’s being truthful in one respect. There shouldn’t be any sleep lost if you bring this one to heel.”

  “If doesn’t come into it, John. If doesn’t come into it at all.”

  *

  The narrow alleys of Southwark snaked among sordid rookeries of buildings, so filthy, so decayed, so propped against each other that they looked ready to slump into rubble. The dark and squalid passages between them were more like open sewers than footpaths, rutted, muddy, awash with the contents of chamber pots and infested with rats, which scuttled back and forth careless of kicking or stamping feet. Even on a frosty December morn, when in other stretches of the city steeples rang the Yuletide solstice, squares teemed with jolly tradesmen and mistletoe bedecked the shop-stalls, where all manor of seasonal delights were arrayed, from dates and figs to hanging rabbits and fat, pink salmon, this dock-side quarter was a dismal warren of hopelessness and despair. Little, if anything, was on sale here; drunken cackles were the only sounds of mirth. The swirling smoke of countless coal and wood fires mingled with the mists of the season to bring down curtains of gloom in every court and ginnel. The people who cluttered them, like black phantoms for the most-part, were exclusively of the tattered, lame variety, as dirty and vermin-ridden as the crumbling structures they dwelled in. Everywhere there was a foetid stench of offal, of rotted straw, of festering human waste.

  As Urmston and his servant were conducted through it by officers of the Watch, it struck the spy-catcher that even the most monstrous criminal could move with relative ease in as loathsome a pit as this. There was no-one he saw who wasn’t more like an animal than a human, who wasn’t gaunt and wolfish, who didn’t glare at the intruders through resentful, red-rimmed eyes. Crime was embedded in such a society: wife murdered husband and husband wife; children cheated parents, parents neglected children; neighbour stole from neighbour; women and girls, maybe men and boys too, granted their favours for the minimum price, else otherwise they’d be taken with force. The few coins one might scratch together would doubtless be frittered in the alehouse or the apothecary’s, anywhere where blissful oblivion, no matter how brief, might be bought and sold.

  “This was the scene of the earliest one, my lord,” the first-officer of the Watch said, standing back respectfully. Torchlight glinted on his helm and breastplate.

  A heap of cinders lay against the gable wall of a tavern. The indelible bloodstains on a few scraps of rag gave testimony to the tragedy that had occurred there.

  “Tell us about it,” Urmston said.

  “Er … a common harlot, she was. Name of … Swift, I believe.” The officer consulted a leather-bound notebook. “That’s correct. Abigail Swift. Murdered on the night of July 25th.”

  Urmston glanced at the fellow, surprised. “That’s very informative. You’re a credit to your office, serjeant.”

  The serjeant was a tall, burly fellow with a broad, ruddy face and a grey tuft of beard. He flushed at the unaccustomed praise, swapping his billhook from one hand to the other. “Erm … thank you, my lord.”

  That he could write was an improvement on most officials of his class.

  “You’ve kept a careful account in each case?” Urmston asked.

  “As careful as I could.”

  Urmston snapped his fingers and held out a requiring hand. “I’ll take charge of it, if you please.”

  Rather surprised, the serjeant handed over the book.

  When out on an enquiry, the spy-catcher’s manner was invariably brusque, even peremptory, though John Kingsley understood the reasons why. As an employer, Robert Urmston was inclined to informal friendliness, while in the privacy of his home life to actual conviviality. But when matters of state were at hand, he would remain disciplined and detached. It helped him, as he said, “maintain an emotional equilibrium essential to the task”. Kingsley wasn’t entirely sure what this meant, but he had a fairly shrewd idea that it referred to the cold shell from which his master conducted all his secret business; the grief, the fear, the fury his enquiries often inspired, were never allowed to penetrate. Of course, an aloof and fearsomely strict lawyer-father had set standards for this during Urmston’s early life, which the younger gent had only aspired to half-heartedly and had never quite achieved. In short, Robert Urmston found it more difficult than his father had to be continuously tough and unsympathetic, hence his recent depression and attempted resignation. That didn’t mean, however, that he let frivolity or even pleasantry intrude when the game was seriously afoot.

  As Kingsley thought on this, his master leafed attentively through the serjeant’s notebook. The details of the crimes were sketchy, and in a spidery, uneducated hand, but they were more than he’d expected.

  “I need as much information as possible,” he eventually said. “Do you have a record of all persons known to have consorted with these women on the eve
nings in question?”

  “There are lists back in our barracks,” the serjeant replied. “Home addresses where possible … no-one we have spoken to is reported to have been armed at the time or to have borne visible bloodstains.”

  “They were very bloody murders, I understand?”

  “That’s correct.” The serjeant indicated the heap of rags and cinders. “This particular woman … her throat had been cut so savagely that the windpipe was entirely severed. The fiend almost removed her head. He also lifted her clothes and attacked her lower belly. I counted at least twenty puncture wounds, the sort made by a sharp but slender blade … very deep.”

  “We were told she’d been disembowelled?” Kingsley said.

  The serjeant shook his head. “Not in this case, sir, though some of the later ones were. This is only an opinion, of course, but these killings … well, they seem to have got more ferocious as time has gone on. The last two or three, were …” his words faltered, “ … bloodbaths. I’ve never seen anything like them.”

  “I have,” Urmston replied.

  Kingsley looked curiously round. “My lord?”

  “Decapitation and disembowelment. I witnessed something similar yesterday at Tyburn.”

  “With all respect, my lord, this is different,” the serjeant replied.

  “How so?”

  “Well … this wasn’t no clean bit of work, like you might see from an executioner, or even a butcher in his shop. This was done in a frenzy … a tearing, a ripping … like the culprit had gone berserk.” The man shuddered. “Horrible.”

  Urmston looked at him with interest. “ ‘Horrible’. Are you qualified to use that word, serjeant?”

  “My lord?”

  “On average, how many murders a week do you see?”

  The serjeant shrugged. “Well, this is the Stews, my lord … one a week, perhaps. Maybe more.”

  “Then you certainly are qualified. Lead on, if you please.”

  Shuffling in a tight-knit group, the investigators and their escort strolled on, only torchlight casting the way before them. The labyrinthine alleys were almost subterranean in their gloom.

  “Tyburn, my lord?” Kingsley whispered. “You think there’s a connection there?”

  Urmston shook his head. “Just a thought, nothing more.”

  But Kingsley wasn’t ready to accept this. He knew his master of old; already he could tell the razor-sharp mind was in motion, linking clues, evolving theories. Robert Urmston had long had knack for unmasking spies and traitors. For all his personal demons, he seemed to possess a natural-born instinct for detecting the villainous.

  Kingsley indicated the serjeant’s broad back. “Do you trust this fellow’s knowledge, my lord?”

  “I find no reason not to. A man who witnesses one slaying a week must be deemed more reliable than most when it comes to the basic analysis of murder.”

  “With respect though, most of the killings he deals with will be assaults during theft … or perhaps the results of drunken brawls.”

  “Which proves beyond question that the murders we are investigating stand out from the norm. He called them ‘horrible’ … he couldn’t suppress a shiver. We have the right man to guide us at this moment though shortly, John, we must dispense with his services.”

  This revelation surprised and alarmed Kingsley. Even with several armed men, he already felt exposed in this dangerous neighbourhood. “We must?”

  “The trappings of authority will only cause the criminal fraternities to close ranks. Yet they are the ones we must move among if we hope to progress our enquiry.”

  *

  The other five murder sites were much the same as the first: grim, lonely little spots in the yards of ruined tenements, in derelict lots or at the deepest points of side-alleys.

  The first-officer of the Watch was as good as his word. In each case, he’d kept some details of the victim, her known movements that evening, and the manner of her assassination. The bodies, of course, had all been removed to pauper’s graves, but Urmston still checked off each woman as he examined the scene of her death.

  The second victim was Mary Judd; she had been slain on August 8th, throat cut, body stabbed and hacked as if by a madman. Lucy Gibbon had been slaughtered on August 24th – over ninety knife-wounds leaving her in a lake of her own blood. Dorothea Jonson had died on September 21st – she had been a servant-girl rather than a whore, but her death had marked the first of the disembowelments. Anne Grey had also been eviscerated – virtually torn inside out – and had had her head severed into the bargain; her date with destiny had come on October 4th. The most recent victim was Jane Wentworth; she had been killed on November 22nd – in a fashion which no sane person could imagine. Enclosed in a tanner’s shed on a marshy reach of the Thames, just below Neckinger Wharf, which was shunned at night because of the rotted corpses of pirates hanging there, the killer had been able to take his time, and had burned articles of the woman’s clothing to light his way through the long, dark hours. Bound and securely gagged, the victim had been sexually tortured with a variety of crude implements, most of them lifted from the tanner’s shelf. A severe and prolonged beating had fractured many of her ribs so that when the maniac finally cut into her, laying back the flesh in great gory flaps, a variety of soft organs had been easily reached. He had removed these one after another, slicing and dicing them as the fancy took him, all within sight of her doubtless goggling eyes. Nobody could tell when death had finally claimed the poor creature, but the monster had practically emptied her before he’d finished, slashing off her head with several brutal blows of his knife, and placing it alongside her heart in the glowing embers of the fire, where it had slowly cooked until dawn.

  Kingsley listened to these facts with chill horror, though his master remained hard and unemotional.

  “Only a devil would do something like this,” the servant exclaimed. “Only a devil could.”

  Urmston mused. “If it is a devil, it’s a devil in human guise … for it needs to move easily in this district without some mob coming in pursuit of it.”

  “The thing that confuses me most, my lord,” the serjeant interrupted, “is what has the villain to gain? These women are penniless strumpets, scarcely worth robbing let alone tormenting to death.”

  “That is certainly a mystery.”

  “What, with there being no reason … well, I think that’s what’s got the people up in arms.” The serjeant glanced over his shoulder. “Granted, it seems quiet now, but when the evening comes down and they get some drink inside ’em … be a different story then.”

  Urmston nodded, and pulled on a pair of leather gauntlets. “Despite that, we must proceed from this point alone.”

  The other watchmen looked astonished. Their officer clearly thought he’d heard incorrectly. “My lord?”

  “Serjeant, our duty is to catch this murderer. Yours is to catch all those other murderers who infest the borough of Southwark. Please, don’t let us delay you anymore.”

  The serjeant remonstrated with them for several minutes, assuring them that any man, no matter whose warrant he carried, would be in danger if he ventured through this district unprotected. Urmston pointed to his and his servant’s swords, saying that they were already protected. The serjeant advised them that there was more documentation, lists of suspects and such, which they might wish to peruse. Urmston replied that he would send for it anon, but that in the meantime he had questions of his own to ask. Still the serjeant argued, but the only reply he received was a command to secure any further murder-scenes he came across, and in that event, to send for the spy-catcher forthwith.

  Shaking their heads, the serjeant and his company strode off into the murk.

  Urmston and his servant now backtracked, reviewing the murder-scenes again. Every foot of the way, Kinglsey sensed eyes upon them, sensed ragged scarecrow-figures in dark recesses, sensed thin, hungry faces glowering from high casements. His gloved hand stayed firmly on his sword-hilt.
>
  “I understand your reasons for this, my lord, but forgive me if I question your judgement,” he muttered.

  Urmston was barely listening. “All these victims, with the exception of the last one, were slain quickly. They must have been. They were lured away from the main thoroughfares, but never very far … and in a district where their screams would easily be heard. What … oh, forgive me, yes. Why else did I tell you to wear your dullest clothes today?”

  Kingsley acknowledged this. Both men wore heavy black cloaks over dark, functional garments, though the sense of threat was still tangible.

  “When we start asking questions, people will know us for what we are,” Kingsley said.

  “They’ll also know that interfering with officers of the queen risks a flogging at the cart-arse.”

  “Would that was all we risked.”

  Ten minutes later, they spoke to their first potential witness, though it wasn’t a satisfactory interview. Close to the scene of the third murder, opposite the door to a noisy tavern called The Black Prince, they encountered a beggar. The laws of vagrancy prohibited beggars from travelling outside their home parish, lest they be deemed vagabonds and be put in the stocks, so it was the norm for such paupers to find a pitch and stick to it. Thanks to the awful ravages of St Anthony’s Fire, this particular fellow was limbless and immobile, which made it doubly possible he had been in this very spot on the evening of Lucy Gibbon’s death. However, it was difficult to get any sort of answer from him. Little more than a twisted trunk swathed in tattered bandaging, his face shrivelled and wrinkled like a walnut, he was more a puppet than a real man. He gave meaningless puppet-like answers, squawks and sniggers, and wild shakes of the head, which served to rattle the metal cup hung round his neck. Urmston put a coin in the cup, but it did no good.

  “Flib-a gib … flib-a gib,” the beggar clucked.

  “Did you see anything at all unusual that night?”

  “Flib-a gib …”

  Urmston glanced at Kingsley, irritated. Then, a harsh voice cut across them.