Death at St. Vedast

by Mary Lawrence

  For as much as Constable Patch had issue with Bianca, daughter of Albern Goddard, the infamous alchemist once accused of having tried to poison the king, he could not willingly discredit her. After all, he had benefited from her keen observations, which had led to his current position in a ward far from Southwark. He had to admit, her points made sense in a convoluted and unconventional way. “Wells, now, Constable,” he said with a supercilious lift of his chin. He tugged on the hem of his important popingay doublet with its shiny brass buttons, and he squared his narrow shoulders. “I thinks ye should give credence to some of what she says. There is some truth in’t.”

  The constable of Aldersgate fervidly wanted to rid himself of Patch and his unlikely associate. “Leave the intricate entanglements to me—hmm, Patch? Go back to your quaint ward of candle-makers and broderers, have yourself a nap by your brazier, and let me decide who is culpable and who is not.”

  “I sees no need to be coarse with me,” said Patch. “Methinks I’ve saved ye a certain amount of bother.”

  Just then, another loud rumble issued from the belfry. The question of guilt was waylaid by the churchwarden’s shouts to the sexton. “Buxton, you fool. Can you not help yourself from trifling with the bells? You’ll bring down the whole lot of it.” His warning had no sooner left his lips than a thunderous crack split the axle holding the heaviest bell in place. The two constables, James Croft, and Bianca turned their faces up to see the casing shift and wood splinter.

  “God’s blood!” shouted Constable Patch. The bottom of the bell tipped crookedly, and he ran from the center of the nave to dive behind a column. Bianca followed suit, as did Lodge. The clapper struck the tilted bell, muffling its clang. Shards of wood rained down, littering the floor below.

  “Away, away, you dunderheads!” shouted Patch, waving his arms as the wood gave way with a deafening squeal.

  There was nothing to be done as part of the floor in the belfry broke from the bells’ collective weight and came crashing down. James LaVerdiere Croft ran for safety, the constable of Aldersgate quick on his heels, but with the falling wood and bell came blinding dust. Bianca heard their shouts and turned away, covering her eyes, waiting for the dissonant sounds and debris to settle.

  CHAPTER 35

  At first, there was nothing to see but a heap of wood crowned by a massive bell. Timbers jutted in every direction; frayed ropes snaked through the pile. A gaping cavity in the roof let in feeble sunlight that filtered through a cloud of four-hundred-year-old dust. Bianca coughed from the thick air, unable to see through it, and brushed herself off.

  Henry Lodge stared in disbelief at the fallen bell and rubble. His warnings to Father Nelson had gone unheeded. He had feared the worst, and now it sat before him, like a strumpet with her legs spread. So stunned was he that if Constable Patch hadn’t directed his wheezy voice into his ear, he might have gone on gawping for another several minutes.

  “I do not see my counterpart and the murderer. I fear they are buried,” said Patch, looking around and touching the churchwarden’s arm. “It will not be so pleasant to uncover their bodies.” He looked at Lodge and Bianca, then removed his flat cap and shook off the plaster and dust. “We’ll need help.”

  Just then they heard a desperate cry from the battered belfry overhead. Through the drifting dust, they saw a slanting floorboard wrenched from its support beam and Buxton, the sexton, clinging to it. He held on by his fingers, dangling from the angled slat, his legs wheeling the air.

  “Oh, God,” said Bianca, crossing herself. She was not so immune that she didn’t make the sign on occasion.

  The churchwarden ran toward the side of the church, where lengthy stone stairs led to the belfry.

  “I know not what Lodge thinks he can do,” said Patch, watching the churchwarden disappear. Patch then yelled up to the sexton, cupping his hand to his mouth. “Strength, man! Help is coming!” He looked at Bianca and shook his head.

  “I think he shall not get there in time,” said Bianca. “He is too far out for Lodge to reach.”

  “I’d say the man is in his last moments,” replied Patch. He looked at the debris in front of them. “He shall land on a not-so-kind cushion.”

  Buxton valiantly struggled to inch his hands up the plank, but with each shift in weight, the board creaked in loud objection. Indeed, the plank bowed precariously toward the floor. Bianca could feel the man’s panic nearly a hundred feet below him. She and Constable Patch could only stare.

  “If Lodge reaches the belfry, I do not trust that the damaged floor will hold his weight,” said Bianca.

  In a matter of moments, the nave began filling with concerned neighbors. The destruction had been heard throughout Foster Lane and its environs. Most stopped shy of the rubble and fallen bell, stunned by the devastation. It didn’t take long for them to notice the sexton. When met with the spectacle overhead, people ignored the disaster in the middle of the church and became taken instead with watching Buxton’s frantic struggle.

  The sexton tried saving himself as best he could. There was no surviving a fall from such a height. He kept working his hands up the plank, but finally, the brittle wood could take no more stress. The board snapped, and with a ghastly scream, Buxton fell.

  The sexton’s body cartwheeled through the air. Some watched in horror, some turned away and covered their ears to his screams. He hit the fieldstone floor next to the bell, landing on his side, the impact crushing his ribs. People recoiled from the sight and the sound of cracked bones, but Bianca ran to him and Patch followed. She knelt to support his head as the man gasped for air in vain. Blood streamed from his mouth, soundlessly trickling down his neck. There was nothing to do for the man but watch him breathe his last.

  After a stunned moment, Patch looked round at the crowd. “Someone find a priest.” He clucked his tongue. “He dies in a church and there’s no one to give him his last rites. A sorry end, that.”

  Across the nave, Henry Lodge appeared, his weighty tread drawing attention to the somber churchwarden. When he got to the sexton’s body, he bent over him. “Poor fool.”

  “He is.” Patch picked up a board and tossed it aside. “Let us not forget the constable of Aldersgate and James Croft. They are buried under this.”

  “We’ll need several men to help haul the bell off the pile,” said Lodge, straightening. “It might require a horse.”

  As men organized, Bianca spied John entering the nave and went to him.

  “I am thankful to see you,” he said, embracing her. “I heard a great noise, and Boisvert’s rent shook. I thought we were under siege.” He looked past Bianca toward the gathered crowd. “I fear to ask what happened.”

  “A support gave way,” said Bianca. “The bell broke through the floor and the sexton got caught up in it. He tried to save himself.”

  “He fell from the belfry?”

  “Aye.” The two walked back toward the rubble. John spied Constable Patch directing men to help dig through the wreckage.

  “What is Patch doing here?”

  “I enlisted his help. He collected the constable from Aldersgate to meet me at the Bakers’ Hall. We ended here. It appears James Croft contrived to possess St. Vedast and dispense with anyone who might interfere. I’m afraid, though, that he, along with the constable of Aldersgate, is buried beneath the bell.”

  John shook his head. “Nay, you are mistaken. I passed the bread master on the street.”

  Bianca stared in disbelief. “Say you again?”

  “People were running toward St. Vedast, but James Croft was making haste to be away.”

  Bianca looked back at Patch, who was delighting in ordering men about, ignoring and superseding Lodge’s efforts to do the same. “Shall I tell him, or you?” They had no alternative but to recruit Patch to their aid. With no authority to stop Croft, Bianca could only try to find and follow him.

  “I shall tell Patch. You know better than I where to find Croft. I’ll urge him to follow.”

&nbs
p; With a final kiss of relief pressed against her forehead, John went to speak with the constable, and Bianca hurried toward the door, then pushed past the growing numbers of curious onlookers cramming themselves into the church. Once on Foster Lane, she studied the street in both directions. Would Croft have gone to his house or to the Bakers’ Hall? Could he have sought Benjamin Cornish or gone into hiding? Taking a practical view, Bianca circled back to the Bakers’ Hall, hoping he had not left town. At least she could warn the bakers of their master’s dealings.

  CHAPTER 36

  For the second time that day, Bianca mounted the steps to the Bakers’ Hall. When she had inquired after Master Croft earlier, she had been met by a lone guild member just inside the door. This time, as she hauled open the hall’s great walnut door, she was met by a pack of raucous liverymen, pouring out of their famed Court of Halimote, where impugned bakers were subjected to the disciplinary rigors of the bread standard.

  The men gave her scant notice as they moved like a multi-headed beast toward the entrance where she stood. They pushed, their voices loud in protest, and raised their fists in anger. She dared not stand in the way, but backed out the door as they spread toward it like spilled wine. In the center of the mob appeared the subject on which their venom was focused—James LaVerdiere Croft.

  The men shoved their master down the steps toward a horse and waiting hurdle, taunting his every move. Croft’s fine gown was gone, and the stuffing from one sleeve of his black velvet doublet hung down where it had been ripped. His wrists were bound, his ankles tethered. Two brawny bakers gripped his arms, and around his waist a rope was tied. At the end of that rope was the baker Foley, pulling him along in not so gentle a manner.

  Missing from Croft’s neck was his chain of office, and in its place hung an iron mold used to make holy wafers. Croft’s exposed head bowed from the weight, but Bianca thought a measure of shame contributed to his humble stance. He did not see her observing his disgrace, but Foley did.

  Foley nodded to Bianca, and she glanced away, wishing not to be publicly acknowledged for her work uncovering the bread master’s deceit. Foley kept mum, sensing her reticence, and gave the denigrated master a particularly sharp tug, which sent Croft stumbling forward.

  At the horse, they shoved Croft onto the hurdle, pushed him back to sitting, then lashed his feet to the woven slats. His resistance was met with more jeering and several cuffs to the head.

  Holding his hand up for silence, Third Warden Austin Jones spoke. “Dismal mewling geck.” There followed a round of agreement. “Ye shall learn well what it is to face the consequences of your foul deeds. First shall you know our court’s laws and punishments—the same punishments you so liberally bestowed on others.” More boisterous agreement, followed by a lone curse. “Then upon our finish,” continued Jones, “you shall be cast to Newgate, where murderers wallow in the squalor and excrement of their sorry consciences.”

  A chorus of assent sealed Croft’s fate, and a final indignity was hung around his neck over the iron mold. “Here roosts James LaVerdiere Croft,” read the sign, “counterfeit purveyor of bread, better served dead.”

  With a spirited send-off from the rumbustious liverymen, Foley urged the horse on, enjoying the honor of leading it through all the streets of London.

  * * *

  James Croft despised bakers who loudly objected to their punishment, and so with conscious restraint, the master refrained from cursing his accusers or resisting his being lashed to the wattle. He did try to dissuade the wardens from inflicting so degrading a penalty on him—after all, he was the master of the guild and had risen through its ranks with hard work and sacrifice. To his dismay, they had rejected his pleas. They heaped all of their frustrations, all of their complaints, real or imagined, extreme or minuscule, upon him. While he did not understand their compulsion or agree with it, there seemed little he could do to prevent their poor treatment of him. So, with iron resolve and his chin lifted, he accepted his fate. He would await his day in court (not Halimote), where he could present his argument in a civilized forum, confident he would be vindicated. But for now, he would remain as dignified as he could. He would show by example how men of the Worshipful Company of Bakers should behave.

  Never did it occur to James Croft that his crime was so deplorable. In his mind, by his reasoning, he was cultivating favor with the king—not with the fickle and petulant Henry, but with the one who mattered—the almighty one. Above all others, he served his Father. Life was short, and what mattered most was to glory Him. Croft believed his good works should honor and please only Him. Let the heathens do their worst, Croft thought. In the end he would be rewarded for his loyalty to papal supremacy, to the true religion of the land—not this contrived abomination conceived of by a blacksmith’s son and sustained by a grotesque and despised king.

  * * *

  Bianca followed the crowd of bakers through the streets of London: first down Foster Lane, past the guildhalls of the Worshipful Companies of Goldsmiths and Haberdashers, where the jarring from the ruts in the road bounced Croft as harshly as if he’d been beaten. On to Cheapside they went, through the market, where people snickered and lobbed turnips. Then Foley circled back to Bread Street and traveled its entire length, past its bakery shops, so that all bakers would see Master Croft’s discredit.

  All the while, James Croft endured stones and rotten cabbage being hurled at his head. Someone from a second story dumped the contents of a jordan, which landed squarely in his lap, and he could do nothing but sit in its rank smell. If that weren’t insult enough, the horse relieved itself upon his exposed pate. Croft dripped with shit; he stank of it; his face was brown. It was only in the whites of his eyes that he looked human and not a man cast from dung.

  So angered were the brown bakers and Foley that a caravan through London was not punishment enough for their fallen master. He was only beginning to show signs of remorse. They would not be finished until he begged them to stop. As they approached London Bridge, a steady rain began to fall. Croft’s hurdle plowed through the mud and slop of the roads, and Foley led the horse through the bridge gate to cross it. In Southwark, they would be met with even rowdier crowds, who might finally break the man’s spirit so they could be finished dispensing their brand of punishment and deposit him at Newgate, a humbled, stinking cullion.

  They trundled across the narrow span, and as they neared the iron grating of the drawbridge, Foley and the troupe of bakers came to an abrupt halt. Opposite, leaving the sordid pleasures of cheap boozing kens in Southwark, were a bevy of white bakers, besotted and loud. The white bakers took issue with having their way blocked, and then when they realized that their brown bread brothers were the source of their delay and that Master James Croft was the object of their brothers’ blistering commentary, they could not leave the matter be. An exchange of verbal gibes commenced, each volley more searing than the one before. Old grievances were plumbed, new gripes were born, and before long, James Croft was forgotten as the two groups of liverymen met in the middle and proceeded to pummel one another.

  Bianca had trailed the brown bakers, hoping for Croft’s ultimate deposit at the steps of Newgate, but she did not expect a row to impede his arrival there. She stood to the rear of the brawl, tucked in a safe alcove out of the rain. Before her was a mob of fifty men, beating the snots out of each other in an attempt to settle the pent-up rage between two guilds that, while having bread and ovens in common, had little else on which to agree.

  She looked about for Constable Patch or a guard on the bridge who might restore order. Seeing neither, she opted to make herself unobtrusive and waited for the men to wear themselves out. Surely some semblance of order would be forthcoming; the rain was coming down in earnest and soaked everyone to the skin.

  Bianca crouched but caught only glimpses of the bread master through men’s rustling legs. He was still bound to the hurdle, though slumped and leaning over, near senseless from his battering ride. The rain had washed the mud
and manure from his face, and he looked barely conscious, which perhaps was just as well given his circumstances. But as the clash continued, the horse and wattle shuffled, moving to the side of the bridge next to the scant railing. Foley had abandoned the bridle and was sitting on a white baker, driving his fist into the man’s face. It appeared to Bianca that no one held the horse.

  Alarmed that the horse would back into the railing, Bianca ran forward, shouting. Next to the rails, the hurdle tilted, threatening to flip over. No one noticed until she grabbed hold of the bridle and the horse began to rear. With hooves lashing, the horse struck a man and knocked him cold. A baker pushed Bianca away and grabbed the reins to gentle the creature, but it sidestepped, still nervous and looking to be away from the riot. To Bianca’s horror, one shaft arm wrenched free of the hurdle, which tipped so that the bread master was thoroughly raked over the grating.

  Despite the interceding baker’s effort, the horse could not be moved from the edge, and the hurdle slid under the railing. It hung by one shaft arm, upside down. The men stopped fighting and turned their focus to saving Croft, despised as he was. But the lashings did not hold, and from all the bumping and dragging through the streets of London, the ties had become loose.

  It was then that Constable Patch arrived. Seeing his murderer suspended over the Thames, about to be lost to the frigid waters below, filled him with panic. He ran forward, shoving men out of the way. With Patch, it was not about saving the man’s life—only prolonging it long enough so that he could be commended for solving yet another crime.