“What ingredient is that?”
“The blood of a whore.”
Portia’s eyes stretched at that. “What? I’ve never heard of that?”
“If you’re not an alchemist, you wouldn’t,” said Mrs Briscoe, fishing for the last tiny shirt and squeezing it vigorously, “but they say that just as some harmful spells need the blood of a virgin, so the Philosopher’s Stone, being beneficial, needs the blood of a whore...”
“And that’s good?”
“Of course. It has the right virtue at least.”
Portia had also tried to find out which barrister it was that had been possessed by the devil but Mrs Briscoe didn’t know.
“How could they tell, seeing it was a lawyer?” Portia had asked sarcastically, knowing that nobody likes lawyers. Mrs Briscoe had laughed.
“Raving and disputing with the devil last week, he was,” she said, “Such a speed and dripping with sweet, Mrs Corbett saw him and said his face was red as the flames of hell so it must have been the Devil possessing him.”
Which settled the matter. Portia quite enjoyed that element of lawyering, of being the villain of every piece. Other lawyers swaggered out their disfavour too. Let one of the men who so loudly spoke against the plague of lawyers in the realm receive some writ or pleading against him, and he was into the Temple fast enough, looking for a champion to fight for him in court.
There would have been no point in telling Mrs Briscoe that poor French Mary had helped look after Mr Cheke while he had plague, because like all respectable women Mother Briscoe hated whores with a passion and that was that. Who cheered and laughed loudest when a whore was whipped at the cart’s tail? The respectable women in their white caps and high hats and damask aprons, always.
As she walked down the street with her slightly dripping basket, Portia was thinking so hard about the dead whores that she walked straight into one of the pie women who had been at the bearbaiting. It was another of the stout crew of French Mary’s ilk, and Portia was embarassed because while masquerading as her brother James, she had actually found herself flirting with the woman.
“I’m sorry, goodwife,” she said.
“Three pies for a penny,” said the woman with no look of recognition, Dorothy her name was, or something similar. “As they’re cold now.”
They had also been pawed about a bit by the bearbaiting crowds, but no matter. This was a bargain and Portia had never been able to resist one, even if she hadn’t needed to count every penny.
She munched one of the six she bought as she continued westwards in a hurry, needing to get out of Ludgate before it shut at six o’clock. As James she could just go north and clamber over the stones of the old wall, as Portia, she couldn’t. It was very annoying in its way.
At least Tim Briscoe had been pleased to see her when he came home and had promised her a load of Newcastle coals as thanks for her help. From the way he looked at his mother, it was clear that he was not at all fooled by her. Portia put to him the idea of Ellie coming to attend her when she was ready – as Portia said, she would be able to bring the babe and do just light work and perhaps a little cooking to start with. Tim Briscoe had nodded thoughtfully about the idea.
There was some kind of commotion on Fleet Street, she saw, as she came down Ludgate Hill. A crowd of people were gathered near Temple Bar, craning their necks to see something exciting at the first floor level. To her shock, Portia saw it was William Craddock, that she had spoken to in the morning. Did he have Plague, perhaps?
Almost certainly not, there wouldn’t be a crowd of people watching, they would all have run away.Craddock had his head out of the window from his chamber which overlooked Fleet Street, and had half climbed out of it, only somebody was holding his belt. His face was puce and he was shouting at something invisible which might have been standing near the big dunghill in Fleet Street.
“You’ll not catch me out, you foul fiend, Prince of Darkness, no, you’ll not murder my soul, no, no, no... I refute you utterly, there is a God as is shown manifestly in the Bible, yea, a God that hath holy angels that will utterly trample upon you!”
It was hard to understand what he was saying, he was gabbling his words so fast, sweat dripping off his nose. Then he caught sight of the people in the street who were pointing and laughing at him.
“Gentlefolk, have a care please,” he called waving his hands, “Some of you are standing between his evil feet, surely you can see the claws, step back I pray you!”
Portia narrowed her eyes. William Craddock was the lawyer who called up the devil? Surely not. Some other people looked about nervously and a few stepped back. Behind Craddock was the vicar of St Brides who must have been called for – he looked very tired and anxious and was ineffectually trying to pull the man back from the window.
“I refute you, sir, a fortiori in conspexi coram Dei...” Craddock’s speech turned to a frantic babble of lawyer’s Norman French and Latin. He seemed to be citing a great deal of case law against the Devil standing in Fleet Street, most of which Portia thought was quite cogent and well-argued. For instance, it seemed that Craddock was accusing Mephistophiles of a breach of the old statute of Praemunire of Henry VIII which was almost certainly correct, since that was the statute which forbade an Englishman to give loyalty to any authority other than the English monarch – such as the Pope of Rome or indeed Satan, in this case.
Portia shook her head. It depended on whether the Devil Mephistophiles was an Englishman, though, didn’t it? Praemunire didn’t apply to foreigners... She caught herself. What on earth was she thinking? She smiled, she couldn’t help it, although she didn’t normally find the mad Bedlam beggars funny. But this was something you had to smile at or be terrified. Certainly it was the right statute and for choice, she thought that Maliverny Catlin would be the right pursuivant to arrest Old Nick for treason.
Poor Craddock’s friends managed to pull him back from the window at last, his Latin raving still audible through the open window until they slammed it. Portia was about to go up the stairs and ask when the fit had come upon him, when she remembered that she couldn’t do anything so direct and bold whilst she was being Ms Morgan the respectable widow.
So she sidled up to the tight knot of women watching avidly from near the conduit and stood quietly hilding her mask with her teeth so she could see them through the eyeholes. Nobody recognised her though she knew most of them.
Mrs Garret was blinking and squinting and craning her neck to see up the street.
“Well, I can’t see anything,” she said, “If there was a Devil in the street I’m sure you could at least smell him.”
“I don’t know how,” said young Mrs Coke pertly, “what with that stink from the dunghill.”
Other women tutted. “Maybe he’s seeing the miasmas.”
“It isn’t Plague, is it?” asked a woman Portia didn’t know, “The fever makes people run wood too...”
“Like poor Jemmy Jones the other day,” said a different woman, “Came roaring down the street and nobody would touch him for he had the black tokens on his face.”
“He’s dead now,” said Mrs Coke with a shiver.
“And his family still shut up in their house,” said Mrs Garrett, “Two of the children gone last night,” she added absent-mindedly.
“Where is Mrs Craddock?” asked another woman, “Couldn’t she calm him?”
“She’s afraid of him when he takes this fit,” said Mrs Coke, “And who can blame her. Her mother tried every physic she knew when it happened last week, but nothing worked.”
“That’s how it can’t be plague,” said Mrs Garrett definitively, “For if it was he would be dead and the plague searchers would have shut the house.”
There was a rustle of assent at this. It seemed to Portia that every woman there seemed to close up on herself at each mention of Plague. Many of them had little posies tucked in their bodices or dangling pomanders, withered oranges stuck with cloves. There was always some plague in Lon
don but this year had been bad, despite the shutting of the theatres, and the winter was still quite mild, no heavy frost yet and it was the middle of October. And the cases were still increasing. It was everyone's nightmare, the worst nightmare, the thing she had always feared herself. It had never occurred to her to fear smallpox in the same way and yet...
A window slammed open again and a candle and a book came sailing through to land on the ground near a startled man who was selling ballads about the Lawyer Possessed of the Devil. It seemed the vicar had tried for an exorcism and been rebuffed.
“Could it have been something he ate?” asked Mrs Coke shyly, “I saw him coming home from the bearbaiting yesterday and he told me he had a pain in his guts then.”
“What could do that to a man?” said Mrs Garrett, gesturing as the frantic babble came through the open window and there was a series of thuds.
“Or perhaps it’s the French pox,” said Mrs Town with a spiteful leer, “That makes you run wood as well.”
“But not at once, you get sores first and have to bathe in murkery, don’t you?” said another woman Portia didn’t know. She was about to tell them that she had talked to Craddock that very morning and he seemed perfectly sane then, when she saw Mr Cheke hurrying along the street, still no more than a walking skeleton, carrying a heavy bag and looking ready to drop. His anxious face scanned the women, and he inclined his head to them collectively since many of them were his customers for face paints and other salves. There was a plague-searcher behind him which made the women mutter and move away. One who lived next door to the Craddocks left the group and hurried down the road to a grocer’s shop as quickly as she could.
Portia nodded at that and thought she would like to get a few barrels of herring into her chambers just in case. If you were locked up in your own house for forty days’ quarantine, plague was only half of your problem. There had been many cases of men dying of hunger and thirst because they had no friends to bring them food and drink.
Mr Cheke knocked on the Fleet Street door of the house and was admitted by Mrs Craddock herself, a pretty young blonde woman in a smart black kirtle trimmed with rose and a rose brocade forepart to her petticoat, very fine indeed. Behind him was the plague searcher who leered at Mrs Craddock, conscious of his power. She flinched from him.
The ranting increased for a time then calmed a little. William Craddock leaned out of the window again and pointed.
“I see you!” he screamed, “Butcher, killer of women, I see you!”
There were prickles up Portia’s back and she looked around. Did he know? Was that what he was talking about in his frenzy? Could he be speaking to the devil that had killed French Mary and Kettle Annie? The women looked around them as well.
“Is he talking about the plague?” one of them asked.
“No,” sniffed Mrs Towne, “Plague kills everyone. Maybe he’s talking about the whore-killer?”
So the word had got to the respectable women already? Portia wasn’t surprised. Not all respectable women were as respectable as they pretended. Now there was a struggle by the window again. It seemed Craddock was trying to climb out to attack the Devil – at least he had no want of courage. Mr Cheke was briefly in view as Craddock’s friends held him, pouring the contents of a bottle down the lawyer’s throat. The ranting slowed and finally stopped. The street was quiet for a second and then people started a babble of talk and nervous laughter.
Still followed by the plague-searcher, Mr Cheke came out of the house and the hare-lipped serving girl shut the door after him.
The women moved towards him in a body, Portia following at the back. She felt sorry for the man – he looked transparent with weariness.
“Is it plague then?” asked Mrs Garrett anxiously.
“I think not,” said the searcher, who was a weaselly faced man in a black stuff clerical gown, his seals and papers hanging from his belt and no doubt the paint in the large leather bag over his shoulder. “He has no tokens on him, nor any buboes, nor any bleeding from his nose or ears or other orifices. He has a fever and has complained of great thirst so it could be a jail fever.
All the women visibly relaxed. The Plague hadn’t come to their part of Fleet Street yet and so they wanted to believe that it wouldn’t. Jail fever was normal, even if it killed you just as dead.
Mr Cheke rubbed his eyes. “I hope the gentleman will sleep for a while. I gave him a large dose of laudanum. His mother-in-law says he has been up all night disputing with the Devil and must be exhausted. Perhaps the sleep will help him.”
Portia frowned. She had seen no sign of madness on Craddock only that morning. Had he hidden it to talk to her?
Mr Cheke took his hat off to his customers and they bobbed him a communal curtsey in return. Portia went down the alley behind the Cock into the Temple, past the round church, through the crumbling cloisters and up to Essex’s Court. She was thinking all the way. Could the Devil have done the killing of the two whores? It was possible. While she now found the myth of a merciful God quite impossible to credit, she found the Devil much easier to believe in. Perhaps the Anabaptists were right and the Devil was the god of this world.
She went up to her chamber, got a bucket and went down to the fountain in Fountain Court to get water. She made several trips with all her bowls and then checked her money to see if she could afford a barrel of herrings. She couldn’t so she went down to the grocer with her marketing basket and found he was crowded out with anxious women. For a mercy he hadn't put his prices up much. She bought what she could: some dried sausage from last year, a crock of pickled eringo roots and cucumbers, a lump of leathery salt cod, a lump of cheese and, on impulse, some salty ship’s biscuits. It was the best she could do and cleaned her out completely.
She still had no firewood or coals and was too tired to go scavenging for wood in the Whitefriars. Then she realised she had two sets of pleadings to write out in fair copy and so she lit a couple of tallow dips and set to work as she munched another of the pork pies and drank the last of her ale.
Maliverny stared at the repulsive creature in front of him. It was a notorious player and worse still a playwright.
“How did you know it was French Mary?” he asked.
“We all know French Mary. She sells hazelnuts at the Theatre,” said Shakespeare uncomfortably.
“Do you remember anything else?”
“No. I have spoken to Mr Enys about it and shown him the place where we found her body.”
Catlin scowled. “Oh. Why?”
“Mr Enys says he wants to know as much as possible about both killings so as to make a beginning as he would with a court case.”
Catlin shrugged and then leaned forward to prod Bald Will’s chest hard with his forefinger.
“Listen to me,” he said, “If it was only up to me, I’d have all of you Godless scum taken up and whipped at the cart’s tail from London town.”
Shakespeare said nothing. There was sweat on his nose and he was staring hard at Catlin.
“I know that, Mr Catlin,” he said.
“So when that lawyer finds out something, I want you to tell me what it is.”
Something disquieting went across Shakespeare’s pointed face. “Oh?”
“Or I’ll have you and all your friends thrown out of London and whipped as vagabonds.” The finger prodded again. “I’ll have you whipped as a vagabond. And not a word to the lawyer either.”
Shakespeare’s face was smooth again.
“Very well, Mr Catlin,” he said, “I’ll be your spy with Mr Enys. What will be my reward if you catch the killer first?”
Catlin smiled nastily. “Freedom,” he said.
Shakespeare nodded. He stood and made his bow, left Catlin sitting in his booth at the Fox and Hounds. Catlin felt obscurely dissatisfied. The player had treated him with perfect respect, but Catlin was sure he had seen contempt cross his miserable player’s face as he left. It really didn’t matter. This was how Catlin always worked: he collected i
nformation from his informants, cross-checked by collecting the information they were giving to any of his colleagues and then nipped in smartly and caught the priest first in the act of Mass-saying so he could have the credit and whatever money was going. Since he was doing God’s work, it didn’t matter how he did it. The system worked for Papists and it would work for murderers. He could use Enys’s work and then perhaps take all of the fee, not just half of it. He had an important use for it, after all.
Outside in the street, Shakespeare was quietly punching one balled fist into his palm again and again. He kicked a stone with all his strength and bruised his toe. A scared-looking urchin blinked at him from behind a barber’s pole.
“Sir, sir,” said the boy, “I done it, I got the lists.”
Shakespeare stopped and breathed deeply for a moment. “Follow me,” he told the boy and marched up the road to Fleet Bridge and the little pawnshop there.
Senhor Gomes, at the foot of Fleet Bridge, knew him as he knew every one of the players and poets in London. Shakespeare went to the desk where Gomes sat peacefully reading something in Hebrew – Shakespeare stared at the book with its alluring, mysterious letters, wishing he could understand what was in it. Perhaps he could ask Snr Gomes for lessons? It was so frustrating: when he had the time to learn something like Hebrew, he didn't have the money and vice versa. Gomes stood up and nodded at Shakespeare.
“Senhor Shakspee, forgive me, but I fear your young page must stay outside.”
Shakespeare whisked round to find the boy in mid-grab at a kerchief which was pinned on display to the wall hanging – also for sale, a fine tapestry of Jacob’s ladder.
Shakespeare grabbed the grubby paw, cuffed the boy’s ear and shoved him outside.
“You stupid kinchin,” he snarled at the boy whose head seemed to be trying to disappear into his shoulders. “What the devil are you up to? I’m bloody pawning a ring to get money to buy you food and you’re trying to lift something in plain view.”
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