Do We Not Bleed

by Patricia Finney

  “It must be a Puritan for they’re all mad, touched in the head.”

  Enys grinned. “Catlin is certain sure it must be a player.”

  “One of us? Killed Kettle Annie? The only alewife in London that would give us credit?”

  “Owed her too much beer money perhaps?”

  Shakespeare waved this ridiculous notion away. At least he knew now what had what had upset him so about the killing. It was the coldness of it, the consideredness of making patterns with innards. He had always assumed that deliberate murder must be hot, but neither of the whores’ murders had been hot killings, they had been cold as clay. It was true, he knew that once he had acted with that kind of coldness – and that was one of the things that still kept him awake at night – but never like this. Not to stab and gut like this. What kind of man could do it? Unwillingly, he was fascinated by the idea, he even wanted to meet the man, gaze into his eyes and perhaps try and understand why he did it. And then find a place for him in a play and perhaps exorcise his own crime too.

  Not a poem, unfortunately. That should all be smooth and sparkle sweetly like sugarplate. Damn it. This was not working.

  Enys was pacing slowly up and down the passage. Her nose wrinkled and she bent to touch a different damp patch with her finger, sniffed it. “She was sick here,” she said, “This isn’t blood, the smell is too sour.”

  Much of it had soaked away but there were bits of carrot on the mud. Enys was frowning at her finger as if it could tell her something. Then she shivered and yawned mightily.

  “Can you recall anything else about what you saw, Mr Shakespeare?” she asked.

  Shakespeare shrugged. “If I do, I’ll be sure and tell you,” he said.

  Enys yawned again, shook her head. “I must go to my chamber,” she said, “I was up all night and still have to prepare some pleadings that should be with the clerk of the court by the end of this week.”

  So Shakespeare and Enys left French Mary’s last traces, her last lying place. Shakespeare shivered as well when they crossed the empty and unfinished wooden ‘O’, as round and unfurnished as the Arab number.

  “Do you think her spirit will walk?” he muttered, finally mentioning the thing that really worried him. “Dying such a death?”

  “I heard you had her buried and paid for a decent funeral?” Enys said.

  “Of course. Even Mr Henslowe agreed to do it. Very respectable too, we had four paid mourners in black gowns and the undertaker put most of the... innards back and sewed her up so she could be whole on Judgement Day. It cost a lot.” The guts hadn’t all fitted.

  “No doubt God can arrange all that as it should be,” said Enys with a distant expression on his hollow-eyed face.

  “So do you think she’ll walk?” Shakespeare persisted as he locked the gate again and tipped the watchman a groat.

  Enys paused. “I am no priest nor expert...”

  “Yes, but do you think...?”

  “No,” he said flatly, “I’m sure she won’t.”

  It wasn’t satisfactory but there was no sense asking any more. Besides, why would Enys know any better than Shakespeare? They were outside the scaffolding now, where the bear-baiting enthusiasts were now queuing for the afternoon’s fight. The famous bear Little John had tragically died and so they were crying a new bear, by name Henry Hunkson, who had been sired, allegedly, by Harry Hunks, the most famous bear of the 1580’s. The red-faced man backed by a trumpet was bellowing of Henry Hunkson’s ferocity and courage while the man who kept the dogs shouted out the canine virtues with another trumpet as counterpoint.

  Working the patient queues – fattened, Shakespeare noted bitterly, by many play-going regulars – there were jugglers and swordswallowers, each with their followings of child pickpockets harvesting from any fool that had brought spare money or jewellery. One tiny urchin had a little knife and was busily cutting the buttons off fashionably decorated sleeves that hung from fashionably shoulder-slung embroidered jackets. Shakespeare smiled and said nothing.

  Hazelnut sellers and orangeado sellers moved up and down busily hawking their wares – a ha’penny for a handful of nuts to crack and a penny for an orangeado. Shakespeare didn't recognise either of them.

  “New and fresh from Seville,” shouted the square-faced middle-aged woman with her tray in front of her in a slightly hoarse voice.

  “Nuts, fresh cobnuts from Kent!” shrieked the other woman.

  Enys blinked red-eyed at them and paused.

  “What time did you find French Mary?” she asked of Will.

  “About 7 o’clock in the morning,” said Shakespeare, “But she was cold and stiff. It took the whole company to move her to the church and my shoulder is still aching.”

  “Had there been a baiting the day before?”

  “I think so. Yes,” said Shakespeare.

  Enys immediately stepped towards the two women who were ostentatiously ignoring each other.

  “We’re busy,” sniffed the hazelnut woman.

  “This concerns the tragic killing of French Mary last week,” added Enys. “Did either of you see her on the...”

  “The Monday,” Shakespeare added helpfully.

  The hazelnut woman shrugged and moved away quickly. The orangeado woman paused for moment, rearranging her tray with its orange balls, each with a hollow reed sticking out of the top. Like many women who had to work in the crowds where someone might have plague, she had a scarf pulled up over her nose. She nodded. “I saw her,” she said, “She bought an orangeado.”

  “She wasn’t selling hazelnuts?” Enys asked with a glance at the new hazelnut woman who now had her back to them.

  “Yes she was, she traded some of them for one of my orangeados, like she usually did, said she wanted something sweet. Will you buy one, kind sir?” The woman's voice had a wheedling sound.

  Enys hesitated, then paid a penny for a small one that the woman gave her from the centre of the tray. As he sucked on the sugary liquid from inside, Shakespeare reckoned that it was all London to a dog’s turd that these were at least nine months old and very far from being fresh from Seville as the woman claimed. According to the Portuguese doctor and merchant he had talked to once, the Seville orange harvest would only now be happening and it would take at least a month before any ship bearing them could arrive in the Pool of London, just in time for Christmas if the investors were lucky. No doubt these were hulls that had been packed in sugar since last year, then soaked in water before being stuffed with broken bits of sugarloaf to resurrect them again.

  Enys was still sucking bitter orange syrup from the hull making disgusting noises. It did at least look like a grenado, with the straw sticking out of the top and the two hulls stuck together with toffee, that small Spanish bomb for throwing. No doubt the pulp had originally gone to the confectioners kitchens to make wet marmalada suckets for children and pregnant women, perhaps even the Queen and her courtiers in Whitehall. But the hulls were a confectioner’s perk and were sold on to the orangeado women. It was a respectable trade for a married woman since you needed capital for the outlay on hulls and more expensively on sugar loaves.

  Enys offered his to Shakespeare, who sucked. It was delicious although he didn’t have a very sweet tooth. When watching a play rather than appearing, he preferred hazelnuts because you could throw the shells at idiot groundlings who kept talking. He wasn’t sure which he preferred when playing on the stage, since either set of noises were equally annoying: busy cracking and crunching from the hazelnut eaters and loud slurps from the orangeado drinkers who sometimes threw them at villains on stage. Philosophically Shakespeare, who often played the villain, took that kind of missile as a compliment and had got good at ducking.

  “So French Mary liked orangeados, did she?” said Enys conversationally to the orangeado woman.

  “She did,” said the woman, “She often bought them, said her teeth couldn’t crack hazelnuts any more, even though she sold ‘em. I think that was the day she said she was g
oing home to put her best kirtle on just as soon as the gate shut and the bait began, because she had a client to meet when he came out.”

  “Oh?” said Enys neutrally, “Did you see him?"

  “No sir,” said the orangeado woman, her broad brow wrinkling. “Only French Mary said she was pleased at it for none of the bloody players at her alehouse were paying up their tabs because they were all utterly poverty stricken with the playhouses being closed and the ones that weren’t were taking advantage.”

  Shakespeare coughed. That sounded like French Mary. His conscience was clear: he had paid his tab as soon as Southampton gave him his gift. Which, in retrospect, was a pity.

  “Did she mention that man’s name or tell you anything about him?”

  The woman frowned and squinted abstractedly at her tray, moving the oranges about. “Now she did say something, sir. She said something about him being a noted gentleman and very important and a fine figure of a man.” The woman coughed and looked down. “So I laughed at her, sir, God forgive me and I said, why’s he going with you then and French Mary, she said, well some men have the good taste to like warm flesh and plenty of it and she was warm enough, she could turn any man to sugar plate or syrup, just as she chose.”

  Enys blinked and Shakespeare felt the whole back of his neck as well as his ears going red. That was certainly true and prettily put.

  “Ah,” said Enys.

  “So I gave her an orangeado to give her strength and sweetness and off she went to change her duds.” The woman looked down. “Last I saw of her,” she added at a mutter.

  Shakespeare suddenly realised what had been worrying him about the woman. “I wonder... where’s Betty Warren?” he asked. “You’ve got her very tray, I recognise it for the pictures of the Moorish palace on it.”

  The woman blinked at him. “Ah... Betty. She’s my cousin, sir. Had you not heard she died of the Plague in the summer and I inherited her tray and her pitch.”

  “Oh.”

  “Goodwife, will you tell me your name?” Enys asked, “If I can lay hands on French Mary’s wicked client, there may be a reward.”

  The woman hesitated. “Yes sir, my name is m... Goody Mallow, Judith Mallow.” As an afterthought she gave a little bob.

  “Thank you, Goody,” Enys was on the point of throwing her empty hull away but Goody Mallow stopped him.

  “I’ll take care of it, shall I, sir?” she said confidingly. Enys gave the hull back to her and it went into a bag hanging from Goody Mallow’s belt. Shakespeare thought cynically that thence it would no doubt re-emerge that night to be miraculously resurrected again with more water and more broken up sugar loaf until the new crop had arrived. Possibly forever.

  They wandered away from the queue which was starting to shorten as the bear-fanciers and the dog-fanciers entered by their separate doors. Behind the walls that surrounded the dogsheds, the excited baying, growling and barking was deafening. Then from somewhere in the bowels of the ring came a loud angry roar, which silenced the dogs for a moment before the baying started up again, louder and more boastful.

  “Will you be watching the sport?” asked Enys.

  Shakespeare shook his head. “I must write a poem for my lord of Southampton,” he said, “If I make no start on it, I’ll never have it ready for him to hear when he comes to London.”

  Enys raised her hat to Shakespeare who bowed shallowly in return. They parted, watched by the shrewd eyes of Goody Mallow, as Enys turned wearily towards the Bridge again.

  Maliverny Catlin was in the Fox & Hounds on Fleet Street where the beer was better. He had gone straight home and slept for half the day before rising and going to visit some of his more reliable tale-tellers. All four of them were full of wonderful stories about Jesuit priests and looked highly offended when Catlin told them he wanted instead to find the assassin of two whores.

  “Whores?” sneered one, known as Peter the Hedgehog because of the way his hair stuck up permanently, “Nobody cares about whores.”

  “Other whores do, and their upright men and so Mr Recorder cares and so I care,” Catlin said coldly. “I will pay for useful information as I see fit, as always.”

  “And the certain sure Jesuit what I seen sneaking in at Mrs Crosby’s two nights gone?”

  Catlin paused, seriously tempted. Mrs Crosby was a well-known Papist and harbourer of Jesuits but this was too pat. “What was he doing?”

  “He was carrying in of Newcastle coals,” piped Peter the Hedgehog, confidingly, “But ‘e was in disguise, see.”

  “And did you recognise him?”

  “Werll,” said Peter, rubbing the back of his head again, “I fink it was that traitor John Gerard, he was a tall man and bony-faced wiv black hair and...”

  Catlin came closer to Peter. “How interesting,” he purred, “When Gerard was seen leaving London two weeks ago.”

  “Ah,” said Peter, not concerned, “Well, that was a feint, see and...”

  “And Gerard is always habited as a gentleman or very occasionally as a gentleman’s falconer and would no more have to do with Newcastle coal than you would since it is all entirely in the keeping of the Coulter family and Old Man Coulter is a fine upstanding and religious man who never misses his Divine Service,” snapped Catlin. The urchin flinched back a little and his wizened old man’s face screwed up with anger.

  “It was him, I seen him, he was skulking about...” There was a whine in the child’s voice now.

  “Carrying a sack of coal, no doubt,” sneered Catlin. “I don’t think so.” He reached and grabbed the back of Peter the Hedgehog’s grimy sleeve and propelled him out of the Fox & Hound's common room and into the street, pinching the tender spot just above the lad’s elbow.

  Peter the Hedgehog yelped. “Well he talked like a priest...”

  “Find me Kettle Annie’s upright man,” said Catlin, “I know you know him, Kettle Annie was feeding you and your sister last month.”

  Peter spat on the ground. “Ain’t got one, none of the old whores in the Whitefriars do. They’re upright men for each other, everybody knows that.”

  Catlin resisted the urge to punch the boy for his insolence and just cuffed his ear. “It stands to reason they must have someone. Who panders for them? Who brings them customers?”

  Peter shrugged his bony shoulders. “Us,” he said, wiping his nose on his sleeve, “Cos the upright men don’t want to cos they won’t be told an’ they’re all scolds so we bring ‘em customers, see.”

  “And Kettle Annie’s upright man? The one who got hit by the kettle?”

  “I fink he works out of the Bridewell or the Fleet,” said the boy, “I fink e’s some kind of screever or similar.”

  “I want to know about all the customers Kettle Annie had in the last week. There can’t have been that many, she was thirty-five if she was a day.”

  “Wot all of ‘em?”

  “All of them. Even the ones who were disappointed.”

  Peter the Hedgehog snortled his nose, then wiped it with his hand and rubbed the snot onto the back of his head. Catlin stepped back a little from him.

  “Wot’ll you give me?”

  “A penny for each customer you remember and that turns out to be true.”

  “A ha’penny when I tell yer and...”

  “No. Then you get rewarded for lying.”

  “Yer might not pay me.”

  Catlin shrugged. In fact he was better than most pursuivants that way and he knew it, because his conscience would not allow him to cheat even a mere kinchin co. Not for concern but for disdain.

  “I’ll talk to the boys,” Peter said at last, “I dunno many of ‘em, I’m a bringer-in for the Falcon and Paris Garden, not the likes of Kettle Annie.”

  Neither Mrs Nunn at the Falcon nor Mrs Swanders at Paris Garden were at all likely to employ a child as filthy and scrawny as Peter and Catlin sneered. “You? They’d never use you to find their gentry clients.”

  “Do too,” muttered the boy as he shambled
off, rubbing his elbow.

  Mrs Crosby knocked cautiously on the door of her smallest and highest bedroom and entered when she heard the quiet invitation "Come".

  Scowling, she came in, shut the door behind her and crossed her arms to stare at the young man standing in front of her. How could he possibly be a priest, he looked no more than a boy, not very tall, not well-built, with a remaining youthful gangle to the set of his shoulders and the way his fingers tangled together. His face was quite round with a dimpled chin and light hazel eyes, but he had a habit of smiling at nothing which Mrs Crosby found irritating.

  He was one of the Bellamy brothers as well and that fact made her very nervous.

  "And that can stop too," she said, "How do you know I'm not one of Topcliffe's pursuivants come to take you?"

  Young Bellamy blinked at her. "Because I know you're a good and holy woman, Mrs Crosby?" he said mildly.

  It was all she could do not to spit. Did they teach these boys nothing but religion at the seminary in Rheims?

  "That's as may be, Father, " she said frostily, "but I can be tricked or surprised just like anyone else. And I didn't know anything about you coming? Eh?"

  He looked down at the rush mats.

  "Er... well..." he said.

  "Does Fr. Persons know about this? Or Fr. Gerard?" she asked with dread, knowing the answer from the boy's stance.

  "No," said the boy, with less equivocation than she expected. "I came as a quite independent person, only a friend at the semiunary gave me your address as a place to find refuge."

  No friend of mine, thought Mrs Crosby. "You're not on mission, then?"

  The boy coughed. "Well I am, of course, as a man of the cloth, but really I came... er... to try and find my sister Ann."

  Mrs Crosby had to stop herself from spitting again. "I know nothing at all about that girl," she snapped. "And you'd best forget her as she's a wicked traitor and a heretic."

  The boy's eyebrows rose. "Is she?"

  "She betrayed poor Fr Southwell this summer," she said, "Gave the place where he was hiding and everything – at your parents' house too. Didn't you know?"