by S. W. Perry
Danby turns to Constable Willders. ‘The body has already been interred, I understand.’
‘Yesterday. At St George’s churchyard, sir,’ says Willders. ‘There was no family to take it. And the parish thought a swift burial was wise, what with contagion being present across the river.’
‘I argued against it,’ says Nicholas.
A heave of Danby’s chest produces something that is half-word and half-expectoration. ‘Wh-hy?’
If you were my patient, thinks Nicholas, I’d be telling you to go back to your family and ensure your will is up to date. But he says, as civilly as he can, ‘I would have liked further time to study the body. And there is no evidence, as yet, that a corpse in Southwark can attract plague from another part of the city.’
‘The pestilence spreads in foul air, Dr Shelby, and corpses are a source of such rank miasmas, are they not?’ says Danby with a condescending smirk. ‘A wise precaution, I would have thought.’
‘There is another reason I thought the burial was hurried,’ Nicholas says, thinking of his conversation with Bianca.
‘And what is that?’
‘Solomon Mandel was a Jew.’
Willders taps his fingers against his thigh, as if to say, We’ve already had this conversation.
‘How is that relevant, Dr Shelby?’ Danby asks.
‘There is no place in London given over for the interment of those of his faith. I felt the parish should have sought advice from his fellows.’
Danby seems unconvinced. ‘Those few Jews who are tolerated in this city are required to denounce their blasphemy and embrace the one true religion. Under the law – such as it applies to a Jew – Mandel was a Christian. Your concern is wasted.’
‘But who knows what was in his heart?’
‘Let us hope it was the love of our Saviour, Dr Shelby,’ Danby says with the solemnity of an archbishop. ‘Like all infidels, the Jew may be redeemed only by his conversion. If he will not convert, then he is damned – in this world and the next. The wiser ones know it. Take for an example old Dr Lopez. He is a Jew; from Portugal, I believe. Yet he has converted. And, as a consequence, he prospers. Why, he is even permitted to attend the queen in matters of physic. No, sirrah, if this Mandel was secretly practising his heresy, being buried in consecrated ground according to Christian rites will be the least of his troubles when he stands before our Lord. You really should read Martin Luther’s book on the matter.’
‘I’m sure you are right, Master Coroner,’ Nicholas says drily, deciding this is neither the time nor the place to start a new disagreement with the Queen’s Coroner. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Willders’s body relax, like a man reprieved.
‘Anyway, the speed of the burial shouldn’t hinder the jury’s deliberations,’ says Danby casually. ‘I see you have already made a detailed report on what you observed.’ He nods to the sheet of paper on the table, next to the dish of marchpane comfits and the jug of hippocras set down for the important visitor from across the river. ‘Have you read it, Constable Willders? Does it accord with your recollection?’
Willders’s fingers start to fidget again. ‘I could not read it for myself, sir. Dr Shelby read it for me.’
‘But does it tally, Constable?’
‘Dr Shelby is correct in what he sets forth, sir, though I cannot comment on the medical nature of what he has written.’
‘But the scene, Constable – the scene. Is it accurately described? May a jury rely upon it?’
‘Oh, aye, sir. A most discomforting scene, it was. Master Mandel was upon the bed, bound with cords. Dr Shelby showed me where several strips of his flesh had been removed from the breast, with a blade of some sort.’ He makes a sideways sawing motion with his hand, as though he’s carving a ham at table. ‘Like someone had tried to skin him alive, I should say. In consequence, there was rather a lot of blood cast about. In all, it was most disconcerting. I’ve seen nothing of its like since young Jacob, Ned Monkton’s brother, was pulled from the river at the Mutton Lane stairs – but that was before I was made constable.’
‘Monkton? Is he relevant?’ Danby says.
Nicholas has an image of young Jacob Monkton’s body laid out on the Mutton Lane stairs, as empty as a carcass hanging in a Cheapside butcher’s stall. At the time, the Queen’s Coroner certainly hadn’t thought the poor of Bankside relevant for an instant. It would be justice, he thinks, to have Danby walk down to the Jackdaw right now and ask Ned to his face if he thought his little brother had been relevant.
‘Not in this instance, sir,’ Willders says. ‘I was merely referring to a past felony. Monkton has no bearing on this one.’
‘Could the wounds not have been sustained in what the law refers to as “chance medley” – a hot quarrel?’ Danby asks. ‘They are quite common here on Bankside, I understand.’
‘Mandel was a peaceable old man. He was liked. He had no enemies to get into a quarrel with.’
Willders nods in agreement. ‘It’s true, sir.’
Nicholas adds, ‘Besides, as Constable Willders has told you, he was lying on his bed, naked and bound. Even for Southwark, that’s an uncommon way to end an argument.’
‘Then to what do you attribute the wounds, Dr Shelby?’ Danby gives the breast of his doublet a lawyerly tug with both hands.
Nicholas can’t help seeing again the bloody rills sliced into Mandel’s flesh. ‘That’s simple: he was tortured. I think his killers wanted something from him that he didn’t wish them to possess.’
Danby considers this carefully for a moment with some noisy sucking of his tongue. ‘Have you not asked yourself this, Dr Shelby: that rather than being tortured, he was being punished?’
‘Punished for being a Jew?’
‘For being a heretic.’
‘I did wonder,’ Nicholas says. ‘The killers ransacked his chamber, but they left that Bible by his bed untouched. And I found two fragments of burnt parchment, close to where they killed him. One had the words Rouge Croix on it. The other made me wonder if Mandel’s killers called themselves “Followers of the Red Cross”.’
Danby lowers his head in thought. Willders taps his thigh, as if to encourage him in his wise deliberation. When the coroner looks up again, there is firm smile of enlightenment on his face.
‘There are those who hold that we should do more than simply condemn Mandel’s kind for our Lord’s death on the holy cross,’ he says. ‘Such people say we should actively chastise them for that heinous crime. Not my own view, as it happens – to my mind, the papist is far more of a threat to our immortal souls than the Jew. But, as I say, you should read Master Luther’s writings upon the matter.’ He picks up the jug and helps himself to a cup of hippocras. He doesn’t offer any to his host, Willders, or to Nicholas. ‘Well, we shall know the truth when we apprehend the perpetrator,’ he says confidently. ‘I shall speak to the alderman about raising a band to seek him out.’
Willders seems even more surprised than Nicholas by Danby’s words. ‘Am I to understand that one of the felons has been identified, sir?’
Danby takes a draught of the spiced wine. He swills it around his mouth before swallowing. ‘I’d have thought his identity was obvious, Constable Willders. Why else would the Moor abscond?’
For a moment Nicholas can’t believe what he’s heard. ‘The Moor? Are you speaking of Farzad? You think Farzad killed Mandel?’
‘Heathen passions are of a nature quite alien to a Christian man, Dr Shelby.’
‘They were friends! Farzad baked bread for Solomon’s breakfast every morning.’
‘Who knows how long a hidden enmity might slumber before it is suddenly roused? Have you not seen Master Marlowe’s Tamburlaine performed? The Moor is a creature of exceptionally hot blood.’
Nicholas can only marvel at Danby’s conviction. He thinks: so you’ve read Luther’s book and seen Marlowe’s play, and now you’re well enough versed to decide Solomon Mandel was killed for being a Jew, and Farzad is his murderer. And you
accuse me of hasty diagnoses!
On St Olave’s Lane, Danby takes the reins of his horse from a servant and makes himself comfortable in the saddle, tugging his gloves tight in preparation for the ride back across the bridge. His horse fidgets beneath him, its hooves clattering on the cobbles.
‘Farzad Gul did not kill Solomon Mandel,’ Nicholas says, trying to remain calm. ‘I would stake my life on it.’
Danby favours Nicholas with a smile of faux-courtesy. ‘We shall leave that to the inquest to determine. I take it you will wish to be included amongst the jury.’
Nicholas asks quietly, ‘Did you know he had a name, Master Coroner?’
Danby looks down, a frown creasing his temple. ‘A name? I do not follow you, sirrah. Who had a name? The Moor?’
‘The crippled vagrant boy I told you about – the body you sent to Sir Fulke Vaesy, for his anatomy lecture.’
‘Oh, him. He had no name, Dr Shelby. I remember what I wrote in my report: unknown, save unto God.’
‘His name was Ralph Cullen.’
Danby stares at him, puzzled.
‘He has a sister, Elise,’ Nicholas continues. ‘For months she could not bring herself to speak, because of what had befallen them. But she’s alive. I found her. Now she’s a member of Lord Lumley’s household at Nonsuch Palace. I thought you might care to know.’
‘That is all very interesting, Dr Shelby. But I am not sure what instruction I am supposed to take from it.’
‘None whatsoever,’ Nicholas says despondently, surprised by the way his throat suddenly seems constricted and his eyes have begun to smart. ‘I know he was of no concern to anyone, least of all to the Queen’s Coroner. But I wanted you to hear his name – if only once.’
Danby turns his horse’s head towards the bridge. ‘A vagrant is a vagrant, whatever he may be named.’ He tightens the reins. ‘I recall Baronsdale at the College of Physicians telling me you were a good physician once, Dr Shelby. But he said you could never let the past sleep peacefully. That wife of yours who died, and this vagrant child you seem unable to forget: let them go. That is my advice. What God has ordained for us in His plan is not ours to question.’
Does Danby also take that to include the murder of an innocent old Jew? Nicholas wonders. ‘If I take your advice, Master Coroner,’ he says as calmly as he can manage, ‘will you do a small service?’
‘If I can.’
‘When you find a moment’s ease from the arduous labours of your office, perhaps you can amend your report into Ralph Cullen’s death. Write down his name. Then he’ll be no longer “unknown, save unto God” – will he?’
‘How could Danby possibly think Farzad is a murderer?’ Bianca asks, unlacing her boots and wriggling her feet.
She and Nicholas have returned to the Jackdaw after another fruitless search, this time along the riverbank as far west as Gravel Lane, almost to the Lambeth marshes. They have lost count of the people they’ve stopped. Have you seen him? He’s an olive-skinned lad with tangled black hair and spice-stained fingers: a Moor, but an honorary Banksider, for all that… Farzad, the Persian boy who can curse the Pope with more invention than all the bishops of England put together…
‘Farzad ran. Therefore Farzad must be guilty,’ Nicholas replies. ‘Danby prefers his enquiries concluded swiftly, so that he can hurry back to the comforts of Whitehall.’
Ned Monkton and Rose are sitting at a nearby table. Rose is making a tally of expenditure. Ned can write his own name, though never in exactly the same way twice, and he watches his bride with undisguised admiration. ‘There’s nobody around here Danby could put on a jury who’d support that charge,’ he calls out.
‘Don’t you believe it, Ned,’ Nicholas answers. ‘There’s bound to be an alderman or a magistrate somewhere only too willing to agree with whatever nonsense the Queen’s Coroner spouts. If they find Farzad before we do, they’ll keep him chained up in the Compter or the Clink until the next Assizes. They might even beat a false confession out of him.’
Rose tosses her head angrily, her black ringlets tumbling about her cheeks. ‘Farzad wouldn’t survive more than a week in a damp, rat-infested cell,’ she protests. ‘He can catch a cold on a sunny day.’
‘What I don’t understand is why anyone would kill a gentle soul like Solomon Mandel in the first place,’ Bianca says. ‘And in such a cruel way.’
‘Because he was a Jew – according to Danby. Some zealot chose to hold him personally responsible for the death of our Saviour on the cross.’
Bianca’s amber eyes blaze with a mixture of anger and sadness. ‘In Padua, the city used to hold a horse race every year. The gallants rode their finest stallions, but the governors made the Jews compete on donkeys, just so the crowd could laugh at them. When my father told me of it, I wept for their humiliation.’
‘You’ve known Master Solomon longer than I have, Bianca. When did you first meet him?’
‘Shortly after I bought the Jackdaw.’
‘That would have been when – some four years past?’
‘It was around the time the Moor envoy came to London,’ Bianca says, her eyes gleaming at the memory. ‘I was in the crowd at Long Southwark, when the procession arrived. I can still see all those fine silk robes, and the strange hats they wore, like onions sitting on their heads. They had faces like hawks, haughty and noble – as if even the meanest of them was a prince. And the colour of their skin – as though they carried the desert sun within their very bodies and it was toasting them from the inside. They were a marvel, Nicholas. As grand as anything I’d ever seen in Padua.’
Her girlish thrill at the recollection makes him smile. He, too, remembers that cold January night when he and Eleanor had joined the expectant crowd on the north side of London Bridge. The Moor party had made landfall in Cornwall and news of its progress towards the city had kept the population on tenterhooks for days. When they eventually rode in, all bathed in flickering torchlight like a caravan sent from a pharaoh’s court, they had come attended by the leading members of the Barbary Company, riding escort.
But his own memory of the occasion is coloured not with bright silks, but with pain. That was the beginning of the year in which Eleanor had fallen with child. The year the match was put to the fuse. The slow-burning fuse that would take until the following summer to blow his life asunder.
‘He used to buy his chickens from my father’s shop,’ Ned calls out helpfully. ‘Pa said Master Mandel had told him he was born in Portugal.’
‘The queen’s physician, Dr Lopez, is a Marrano Jew from Portugal, too,’ says Nicholas. ‘He might have known Solomon. Perhaps he’ll agree to talk to me.’
‘None of this answers the question: who killed him?’ Bianca says. ‘Or where Farzad is.’
‘Perhaps your Captain Connell might know more about Mandel.’
‘He’s not my Captain Connell, Nick,’ says Bianca.
‘But Mandel knew the captain well enough to suggest that you invite him to drink here. I don’t know if you’ve looked into Connell’s eyes, but if you’re looking for a man capable of murder, there’s one in there, for sure.’
‘You really don’t like him, do you?’
‘Do you?’
‘That’s not the point. Connell was at the Jackdaw getting drunk and being uncivil, remember? We saw him leave with his crew, after we’d searched for Farzad.’
Nicholas admits defeat. ‘You’re right. The footprints suggest Mandel was taken from outside the Jackdaw sometime during the wedding feast – either when he went out for air, or perhaps as he was on his way home.’
‘So they were out in the lane, waiting for him?’
‘That’s my guess.’ Nicholas gives Bianca a pensive look. ‘But whatever Danby says, I don’t believe that the murder was a punishment. At least, not for anything Solomon Mandel was keeping hidden in his soul.’
There are buildings in London that seem ideally suited to their purpose. For an inquest into the murder of a solitary old man, thinks
Nicholas, you couldn’t choose a better one than the deconsecrated church of St Margaret’s on the Hill. It, too, appears to be dying a slow and unmourned death. The stained-glass windows have been smashed out and bricked over. Half the graveyard has been dug up and replaced by cheaply built private tenements. Instead of worshippers, the nave now plays host to quarter-sessions of the peace, where the magistrates can dole out brandings and ear-trimmings to the felonious of Bankside. When Nicholas opens the half-derelict door and steps inside, the day after Coroner Danby’s visit to Bankside, the sound of his footsteps on the stone floor echoes like a warning whisper: be gone… be gone… be gone…
The nave is empty, the pews long ago sold off or turned to firewood. A cold easterly wind moans outside like the lamenting of a ghostly congregation. He catches the smell of stale sweat, a permanent memory of the prisoners corralled here before transfer to the Compter and the Marshalsea. There is a pile of straw where the rood screen once stood, to provide a measure of comfort for them. It reeks of emptied bladders and despair. If this was ever God’s house, He defaulted on the mortgage and handed back the keys long ago.
A murmur of voices reaches him from above. Looking up, Nicholas sees the nave has been cross-beamed and planked over, to make an upper floor in the ceiling vault. He climbs the narrow wooden ladder with a growing sense of dejection.
But when he reaches the source of the murmuring, he discovers that Constable Willders has assembled the jury from amongst the wiser parish notables. Two of them are even patrons of the Jackdaw. Perhaps there’s hope for Farzad, wherever he may be.
The only outsider is the clerk that the Queen’s Coroner has sent to represent him and record the proceedings. Nicholas wonders if Danby’s absence means that Solomon Mandel is destined for the same official anonymity as little Ralph Cullen.
The clerk is a mousy little fellow whose nose twitches in the chill air. He hugs his writing box to his chest, as though he expects some Southwark trickster to steal it away the instant he looks elsewhere.