Mask of Night

by Philip Gooden

  I raced through the maze of alleys and narrow streets that lay on the eastern side of Cornmarket until I reached Shoe Lane. Tucked into a crowded corner was a familiar sight: a piebald horse hitched to a cart whose wheels would surely be creaking if it was on the move. If I wasn’t mistaken my ride the previous evening had been courtesy of this conveyance. And here was the Hobys’ dwelling – a pinched place maybe but even so, for a mere carter and his family, it represented a considerable stake in the world.

  The front door was open. I had already that morning walked away from danger. Now I was preparing to put myself in it once more.

  I grasped Jack’s foil and pushed the door further open. There was a figure on the other side of the tiny, unfurnished lobby. It was wearing the cloak and bird-like hood with which I was, by now, quite familiar. My heart was beating fast from my run, from fear and excitement.

  “There’s nobody here,” said the figure. “No widow, no children. They have taken the stuff.”

  I swallowed and said, “They must have known you were coming.”

  “Close the door – God’s bones, it’s cold enough.”

  The figure seemed to shiver in front of my eyes.

  “Perhaps you are sick,” I said. “Like Doctor Bodkin.”

  “Close the door.”

  “If you take off your hood.”

  With one hand he pulled off the hood. The other hand was clutching the thin, whip-like cane with which the dead had been prodded and poked.

  I pushed the door shut. There was very little light in the lobby, only what seeped through from a room to one side of it. I didn’t need much illumination, however, to identify Andrew Pearman, the apprentice to Doctor Fern. His face, now it was unmasked, had not changed. It still had that scraped, raw quality.

  “I trusted Doctor Bodkin to deal with you,” said Pearman.

  “He had other things on his mind. Besides, he told me that he was no murderer.”

  “I should have finished the job myself.”

  “Why did you change Doctor Fern’s shoes after the play performance?” I said. I looked down at Pearman’s feet. He was wearing the plain shoes which I’d last seen on Hugh Fern’s feet when the Doctor climbed on to the stage as Friar Laurence.

  Pearman was quick. He didn’t pretend ignorance of who or what I was talking about. He must have realized that either he or I (or both of us) had nearly reached the end-point.

  “Because he was wearing mine. We were of a size. He took them because they were more appropriate for the – what part was he playing?”

  “A friar. I made some remark about his footwear, never expecting him to act on it. But why did you change the shoes back again after your master was dead?”

  “Because they were my shoes, I say. A mere apprentice is not supposed to wear fine shoes with silver buckles.”

  “True,” I said. “Just as a player is not supposed to carry a sword.”

  I had noticed that Pearman was wearing his master’s shoes while he stood, in a distracted state, outside the locked room off the inn yard. Had noticed it but not really taken it in. The next time I glimpsed that fine pair they were once more back on the Doctor’s feet.

  “It is no crime to take a dead man’s shoes,” said Pearman, “particularly if they belong to you.”

  “No crime at all, but it shouldn’t have crossed your mind to do it.”

  “Why not?” said Pearman.

  “You were distraught. So distraught with grief that it could not have occurred to you to change shoes with a dead man, whoever they belonged to. Why, I heard you groaning and calling out the Doctor’s name.”

  “He wasn’t dead then,” said Pearman. “That was why I was calling out, to cover his noise.”

  I waited for more, holding my breath.

  “He should have been dead, but he wasn’t.”

  “What did you do to him?”

  “I stabbed him while you were off fetching help.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said, scratching my head in a puzzlement that was part genuine, part feigned. If I could keep this man talking now . . .

  “It’s very simple, Revill. My master was close to uncovering my secret labours, my work harvesting bodies for Doctor Bodkin – ”

  “And your work for yourself.”

  “I am entitled to my small pickings.”

  “Leave that to one side,” I said. “Tell me why Hugh Fern had to die.”

  “We were in conversation before your play started. He assured me that he was very near uncovering a dreadful conspiracy, a sacrilegious business involving Ralph Bodkin. He believed that the other doctor was cutting up corpses. We were all in danger. I had to act straightaway. I do not believe Doctor Fern altogether suspected me – although there was a certain look in his eye. That made it easier for me to do what I had to do.”

  I remembered the close conversation between Fern and Pearman which I’d observed in the inn yard. I recalled the clouded expression on that normally cheerful man’s face and, once again, those words of his: Doctors may be worse employed, believe me. Much worse employed.

  “What did you do?”

  “I was already inside that little room. I called him in as if I had some secret to impart, I shut the door and offered him drink.”

  “Offered?”

  “Pinched his nostrils until his mouth gaped open then poured the potion down. My grip was stronger than his. Held him until his struggling ceased then released him so that he fell to the floor. Went out, locking the door behind me.”

  “I was there, sitting on the bench with my injured foot. I didn’t see you.”

  “You were dozing. But I saw you, Master Revill. And seeing you gave me an idea.”

  “You wanted me there when you discovered that he was dead – inside a locked room. In that way there could be no doubt that Doctor Fern had killed himself and been alone at the time.”

  “Not killed himself,” said the doctor’s apprentice, “but died a natural death. The poison wouldn’t have shown.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Who is to say how a man dies? There is no digging about inside bodies, no dissection. It is not permitted by the laws of God or man.”

  Pearman grinned humourlessly.

  “Nevertheless, you still required a witness even of this ‘natural’ death. So you – let me see now . . . ”

  My mind raced.

  “You came back all distracted, wanting to know the whereabouts of your master. That was well acted. You should have been on stage.”

  “Acting is a low trade,” said Pearman.

  “Then we both went through that mime-show outside the locked room, with you pretending to see something inside and being sweaty and urgent. You convinced me that something was wrong. Then you broke through the panelling on the door – and . . . ”

  I saw it clearly now.

  “The key,” I said. “There was no key already in the lock on the other side of the door. It was in your own hand all the time. When I reached through to get it, because you’d claimed your own reach wasn’t long enough, the key was slippery to my touch. The metal was warm too. Not surprising since you’d been clutching it in your sweaty palm moments before.”

  “Yes, I put it there myself,” said Pearman, half proud, half reluctant, like a conjuror explaining a trick. “When I reached inside with my hand I replaced the key in the lock.”

  “It was a sleight of hand. A mere trick.”

  I felt obscurely disappointed. Absurd, given my present position, but it was so.

  “A trick – but it worked,” said Pearman.

  “Not entirely though, because you discovered that your master was still alive when he should have been dead. That was the reason you looked so shocked. You weren’t distracted with grief but you were terrified – terrified of being found out. I knew that wasn’t acting, it couldn’t have been counterfeited.”

  “I came back too soon,” said Pearman. “The potion would have taken effect eventually. I know my potions. I was a doc
tor’s apprentice.”

  “But you couldn’t wait for it to take effect by that point. You’d brought this disaster on yourself. In a few moments a whole crowd would be gathering outside that little room, and Doctor Fern was still breathing, still groaning, even while you were crouching over him.”

  “God knows what he might have said.”

  “He could have accused his apprentice with his dying breath.”

  “So I stabbed him through the heart. Then everybody came crowding round.”

  We paused here, as if to take breath.

  “And Angelica Root? What had she done to deserve to die? How had she offended you? Did you get a good haul from Cats Street?”

  Pearman said nothing.

  “You are a common thief, Pearman,” I said.

  He lifted his cane and I raised Jack’s foil. We stood like that for a time. Then, as if by mutual consent, we lowered our weapons.

  “I am no thief. I merely take my dues for harvesting the dead.”

  “Dues?”

  “From Ralph Bodkin at so much per corpse, provided they went unreported . . . while if I take the property of others who is there to protest? Anyway, it is all gone from this house. I should have known better than to trust it to Hoby’s wife. Her husband was a thief.”

  “A thief,” I repeated (and remembered the occasion on which I’d seen John Hoby outside the Tavern, being berated by Jane Davenant. I’d wondered what was in the box he’d unloaded, or rather dropped. Goods looted from a plague house, most likely, and sold to a ready customer.).

  “Yes, Hoby was a thief and his widow is no better. She has run off with her brats and my profit.”

  “Why did Mistress Root have to die though?” I persisted. “She didn’t die just for a salt cellar surely?”

  “Like you, she had started to suspect me.”

  “I did not suspect you.”

  This was true; I hadn’t.

  “You were accustomed to look at me . . . in a certain way.”

  “Like Doctor Fern looked at you?”

  “I can tell from the eyes. Not that you can do me great harm for I am invulnerable like this.”

  He indicated his costume.

  “So I wrote a note to test you, to see whether you’d visit Mistress Root for information. But you were too cunning to keep the appointment, and stayed out of my reach.”

  I said nothing about the fact that I’d been in the house, hidden under the dead woman’s bed. The murderer’s words confirmed, however, that the letter from the old nurse was a forgery. Pearman sounded calm, almost resigned, yet he must have been half out of his wits if he took murderous action because he believed men and women were looking at him in a certain way. Why then, on the basis of a glance or two, he might believe the whole world to be against him. (Yet, in a sense, he would have been right to believe this.)

  “Mistress Root?” I prompted the cloaked man.

  “She roused my suspicions by asking me if I had a plentiful supply of figures. So she too had to drink my potion.”

  “Figures?”

  “The clay images which Doctor Fern used. He would apply a salve to a figure to effect a cure over a distance. Say that a sailor’s wife came to him, having heard that her husband was sick overseas. Or a merchant looking to make his wife pregnant.”

  “At least Doctor Fern tried to heal men and women,” I said. “While you merely stuck pins into their images to cause harm.”

  “I was curious to see whether it worked.”

  “Sarah Constant fell ill because of such a figure.”

  “I know nothing about that.”

  “But you left one of them outside the door of her house.”

  “I scattered them here and there throughout the town. Simple stuff, early days.”

  “Her cousin believed that she was being poisoned.”

  “Then her cousin will have to explain it.”

  “How many have died through your labours, Master Pearman?”

  “Not so many. I started with one of the Ferns’ dogs and I moved on to an old woman who beat me once for stealing apples. I took in a carter, and a physician, and an old nurse, with others along the way.”

  “Not so many, you say!”

  “How can one man compete with the pestilence?”

  It was the kind of remark Ralph Bodkin might have made. High-handed, almost unhuman. I wondered whether the doctor had infected the apprentice with his diseased outlook, or whether Pearman had started out so cold and arrogant. They were not dissimilar.

  “Look around you, Master Revill. See how many perish daily in this city, in this kingdom. Tell me, whose hand is that?”

  “That is God’s will,” I said.

  “And all this work was mine,” said Andrew Pearman, making to put his billed mask back on. By doing so, he transformed himself from a man into something monstrous.

  I raised my foil to strike at him but he was too quick for me. He lashed out with his cane and caught me on the upper part of my sword arm. The force of the blow brought tears to my eyes and I almost dropped my weapon. Instinctively I stepped back and saved myself from another swingeing blow, this time directed at the region of my eyes.

  Pearman said, his voice coming clear now through the hood, “I have beaten a man to death with this.”

  I didn’t doubt it and so didn’t reply. Instead I saved my breath and crouched with my back against the door. As I’ve said, the lobby was tiny – if we’d stepped forward a full pace each, we’d have collided – and here I was trapped with a murderous madman. I might have escaped through the door which led into what must have been an equally tiny front room, but the only way to get there was to go past Pearman. I might have unfastened the front door and fled into the street but this would have necessitated fumbling with the handle behind my back and then moving towards my opponent (since the door opened inwards). This would take two or three seconds and during that brief space of time Pearman could disable me with his cane, lash me about the head or neck, get me on the floor, and deal with me at leisure . . .

  My only chance was to keep him at a distance with my playhouse sword. I’m no swordsman, as you’re aware, despite Jack Wilson’s best efforts at tuition. Anyway there’s a world of difference between capering about on the stage, flashing your foil, knowing that when you fall down you’ll rise again to general applause, a world of difference between that and fighting for your life in a little room. Like Mercutio, I was more for show than use.

  I kept my blade up, darting it rapidly from side to side to impede the jabs and swings of Pearman’s cane. I tried to recall the strokes and lunges which I’d been taught – all those stocattas and imbrocattas, those voltes and punta riversas – but my body had no instinctive knowledge of the moves while my head stayed empty.

  Or not quite empty since what ran through it was a single word: “Help!”

  Meantime Andrew Pearman loomed up on the other side of the lobby, like a great beetle with a flexible, stinging horn. Although he might have restricted his vision slightly by donning his hood, he was used to wearing it and it gave him extra protection against my blade if, by some accident, I’d succeeded in striking home. And his black cloak was nearly as good as armour.

  The wound I’d received the night before began to flow with blood once again, and I wiped frantically to clear my eyes. The dark figure with the pale wand would not stay still but rattled about in this confined area, looking for a gap in my guard. He would find it sooner rather than later. He ducked down and weaved about with his cane as if to cut me off at the legs, then reared up and swung at my exposed face, which was already trickling with blood. Each time I succeeded in avoiding his stroke or warding it off with my foil but I was thoroughly on the defensive.

  A wave of dizziness swept over me. I suppose it was the effect of the last few hours. Pearman landed a second blow on my sword arm and, although I managed to hang on to my blade, I felt that another hit would cause me to let go. I seemed to see myself from a distance, and Mercutio�
��s words about “worm’s meat” flew into my head. Incongruous and unwelcome words – but I’d played the character several times, and knew his dying moments better than anyone.

  Then, suddenly, Pearman lost his footing. He crashed into the back of the lobby and slid down the wall, his arms spread wide to prevent his fall, his elongated head wagging from side to side. For a second he couldn’t defend himself. I had a single chance. If I didn’t take it now . . . I darted forward with my foil. He saw me coming and, off balance as he was, threw himself to one side. My blade penetrated the soft plaster of the wall (no oak panelling here in Shoe Lane) and then it struck something solid, probably part of the timber frame. The blade bowed – and snapped.

  The useless tip was quivering in the wall while I was left holding a jagged stump. Well, it was only a stage sword and not a proper foil tempered in Toledo. It would do for a Tybalt or a Mercutio, it was not meant for the cut-and-thrust of real life.

  Pearman regained his balance. The snout of his hood came up. I wiped at my bloody eyes. He raised the cane. I now clutched a few inches of ragged metal while he wielded an implement several times as long. I threw up one arm – the one holding the remains of the foil – to protect my face while, with the other hand, I fumbled at the door handle behind my back.

  Now it was my turn to lose my balance. As I was grappling with the handle, my foot slid on something puddled and my legs shot out in front of me. I made a fall which, on stage, would have been executed only by the clown. That is, I landed with an unheroical thump on my bum. My back and head crashed against the door which I’d been struggling to unfasten. Idly I observed that I’d slipped in my own blood, which was now dripping copiously down my face.

  Andrew Pearman, the monstrous insect, came forward. It only took him two strides. He straddled me and looked down, what little light there was glinting off his eyepieces. He lifted up his cane. I knew his purpose. He had said, “I have beaten a man to death with this.”