“Mine,” he said, “I’ll bring the papers myself, I’ll need to hear the rest of this tale. Make sure you don’t get yourself hanged, or at least not before you can tell me about it.”
Enys was in such a hurry to get down to the river, she nearly tripped over the nuisance of a sword which she hadn’t done for several days. Having saved the pennies for food, she spent two of them on a boat to go downriver quickly to the Bridge and thence ran, almost sprinted to Fleetwood’s house. It could indeed have been Catlin, but more importantly, it might not actually have been the whorekiller who killed the old beggarwoman. It could be some... other twisted murderer copying what someone else was doing. Jesu. Were there two of them in London? Surely not. Yet... The things were different.
Fleetwood was not there but Enys found out where was the crone’s body from Armitage, the secretary. She hurried to the nearby crypt and there she found Peter Cheke viewing the body as well. They bowed to each other, Enys reminded in the nick of time by the weight of her sword on her hip not to curtsey.
“I thought so,” Cheke said, as if they were continuing a conversation, “Look here. She has been strangled.”
It was true. The wrinkled scrawny old neck was printed with blue fingermarks and tongue slightly stuck out.
“Her face isn’t blue,” Enys protested.
“But she’s old. The mere terror of being strangled may have stopped the movement of her humours by itself.”
The old woman’s lips were drawn back in a snarl showing the brown stumps of her teeth. The smell from her was already bad though the undertaker had put back the innards. Though that was all wrong as well.
“I think it was not the whorekiller,” said Enys.
“She was anatomised though.”
“Not really, not carefully. The corpse I saw and the one I had described to me, was done out so neatly, like a pattern, with the guts circled round and the... ah... womb laid upon her legs.”
Cheke looked taken aback.
“You saw her womb?”
Enys nodded. “Fleetwood told me what it was, I didn’t know.”
Cheke nodded. “It is supposedly illegal to anatomise men or women although they do it at Oxford and Cambridge,” he said, “I myself have... er... never seen a woman’s inward organs of generation. Did you see any homunculus within?”
“What?”
“Any babe?”
“What? No, of course not, Kettle Annie was not pregnant. Anyway, it wasn’t opened. It was only the size of a small pear made of flesh.”
Cheke nodded, his face hungry. “Could you tell me what humour it was mainly composed of?”
“I would say the sanguine humour, since it was red. But that isn’t my point, Mr Cheke. It’s that all was tidy with Kettle Annie, a tidy cut, the internal organs tidily arrayed. Shakespeare told me the same of French Mary. But this one was done at hazard.”
Cheke rubbed his top lip. He was still cadaverous but always had been as far as Enys could recall and had clean bandages at his neck. His normal paper pallor was gone a little and he had some colour in his cheeks.
Enys gestured at the ragged slash half-hidden by the undertaker’s bandages. “And that mess there... Look how ugly it is, how jagged. Surely this is not by the same hand?”
“Yet surely William of Occam’s philosophical razor forbids us to have more than one whorekiller that cuts up his victims in London at one time. Could it have been the same man but in a hurry?”
“It could, I suppose. But why?”
"Afraid of discovery, surely? Given it was in a wealthy man's yard and a servant could have come or let out the dogs?"
"Why do it there at all then?"
Cheke shrugged, then sighed. His face was very sad, looking at the frail remnants.
“Did you know her?” Enys finally thought to ask, surprised at her own insensitivity. Jesu, was she turning into a boorish man in her head as well?
Cheke nodded. “Her name was Goodwife Barbara Harbridge, a creature that never did anyone any harm, so far as I know, although some called her a witch. I knew it was her when I heard the Crier give her description. She went to St Bride’s church every Sunday, she lived in the Blackfriars until my Lord Chamberlain evicted all the squatters there and afterwards she lived with a family near the Cockpit and spun and knitted for her living.” He sighed. “It was hard for her to get for she had severe arthritis. And so she would gather herbs for me for physic – very accurate she was and careful to pick the correct ones and at the right phases of the moon.”
“Does it really matter what the moon is doing?”
“As above, so below, is the principle. For causing an illness to reduce, the herb must be picked at the wane, to build up strength it must be picked on a waxing moon.”
“I know that,” Enys said impatiently, “But I have always wondered if it really does matter?”
Cheke smiled sadly. “I know so little, Mr Enys, I really can’t say. Perhaps it does. Anyway, what harm does it do?”
“How did she come to know about herbs?”
“So do many women of her age and er... origins. Sometimes she did a little midwifery which was once her trade until her hips got too bad for her to bend down to the birthing stool.” Enys nodded. “Alas for it, I should have listened to her...”
“Why?”
“Goody Harbridge was very troubled these last few months. She wouldn’t tell me why, though I think it may have been connected with a little herb garden she found and wondered about.”
Enys frowned. “There are places like that all over London, little waste gardens where weeds grow...”
“No, she knew it because of the combination of plants there, although it had been well-hidden and deliberately planted to look as if it were wild. She seemed to feel that some of the plants should not have been there, she even said she would grub it up as it was a witch’s garden.”
“Where was it?”
“In Alsatia, she said, in a wall near the Whitefriars, new planted this last spring.”
Enys felt her face paling as a cold wind blew along her backbone. She hoped Cheke wouldn’t notice. “Oh?” she managed.
“I asked her if she had found the gardener yet last week, joking, and she frowned and said she hadn’t, but I think she was lying. What if she found the witch after all?”
“How do you know she was lying?”
“She was an old woman, Mr Enys, deaf and a little wandering, she often talked to herself without realising what she was doing. She was muttering about chickens and the witch’s garden, but when I asked her she said she had forgotten.”
Enys relaxed slightly. There had been no chickens nor traces of them in the little patch of plants she knew of.
“Do you think it was the witch that killed her not the...”
“The witch or the witch’s familiar or the Devil or the whorekiller or indeed all three in the one – it stands to reason there must be a connection between the witch and the Devil, if there is a witch at all,” said Cheke, frowning with puzzlement. “I would give a good deal to know what kind of frenzy fills him so he cuts them up? What for? Is he looking for something in their guts? Perhaps some kind of foul prophesying as the Romans did?”
Enys shuddered and changed the subject. “Which family did Goody Harebridge live with?”
“The Worthings at the sign of the little white boar, next to the Cockpits. Will you go and talk with them?”
“I might if I can, but I’m overpressed with legal work at the moment, I may ask my sister if she will do it.”
“Her mask answers well, I think. And she may get answers from people who are afraid to speak to you,” said Cheke, “Do you think Mrs Morgan will eventually be able to leave the mask off?”
Enys felt her stomach swoop. For a moment there she had actually believed that she did have a sister she could ask to do things like that. She flushed at how close she had come to giving herself away. Mind you, there was something in what Cheke said...
“I don’t know, Mr Cheke, she has
a megrim today as she often does but I will ask her,” she said, “I’m... er... I’m in hopes of finding a woman to attend her as well.”
That was becoming a necessity. What if somebody questioned why Mrs Morgan and Mr Enys were never seen together when she obviously needed an escort? Mr Cheke nodded and bowed.
“I think that would help as well,” he said, “With a woman to accompany her, she need not feel lonely, a condition that always irritates the melancholic humour. Please call for me to attend her at any time she should need me,” he added as Enys left him.
Catlin was heartily sick of the whole damned business, but had to continue. He was having to outface the same tedious sequence of outraged and suspicious denials and flanneling. He had hired a serving man he had used occasionally before, a large silent creature who would do exactly what he was told. On the couple of occasions when an outraged suspect had shouted for his own men, Young Daniel simply moved up behind Catlin and coughed. He was large enough that a wealthy householder considered the damage likely to be caused by a fight as probably not worth the satisfaction.
Occasionally Catlin thought they might be telling the truth and marked the name with a question mark, but normally he assumed lies and was rarely mistaken. Eventually they would tell him what he asked, but none of it had been really helpful. Most of French Mary’s clients had long stopped visiting her for venery and most of Kettle Annie’s clients had witnesses as to where they were on the important days, including the night before. None of them had any traces of blood on them or their shirts nor anywhere about the house.
There were only a couple left on his list. He knocked at the door of William Craddock, a smart house overlooking Fleet Street, with a stone frontage and carvings stolen from the old Whitefriars abbey fixed over the door. Catlin eyed them sourly, a couple of female Papist saints done in a fusty ugly old style, one holding a cartwheel and the other a girl wearing a beard, of all things.
A scared looking child with a harelip opened the door and let him in without a word. She showed him into a hall that had a very magnificent but overlarge mantelpiece over the fireplace and black and white tiles on the floor. The child scuttled away to fetch the mistress and eventually a square-faced middle-aged woman in a good murrey gown covered with a linen apron appeared, wiping her hands on a cloth.
“Yes?” she said in an extremely unwelcoming tone of voice, eyeing Catlin up and down.
“Mistress Craddock, I would like to speak to Mr Craddock?”
“I am Mrs Ashley. My son in law is busy at his paperwork and the lady of the house, my daughter is unwell.”
Catlin gave the tiniest inclination of his head and showed her his warrant. Behind him Young Daniel stood, silent and massive in his leather jerkin and statute cap. Young Daniel was one of the few lads Catlin had ever met who wore his statute cap completely straight on his head. It gave him an oddly determined air. Mrs Ashley eyed him and then the warrant, her lips moved as she read the words, which surprised him. Most women of her age could not read. “I’ll wait,” he said.
Her shoulders shifted in an irritated sigh. “My apologies, Mr Catlin,” she said, “I have been at salting down our pork for the winter – the butcher delivered the side yesterday. I will finish as quickly as I can so I can keep you company. Mary! Fetch Mr Catlin some ale to drink...”
The little creature in her blue kirtle scurried off to the kitchen again, followed in a more stately fashion by Craddock’s mother-in-law, leaving Catlin alone so he could be sure he was unwelcome.
The hall also had some bright honey-coloured oak panelling for warmth and light and an expensive Flanders tapestry showing the tale of Solomon’s judgement of the two women disputing the dead baby. Everything was shining and clean with beeswax. As Catlin stood waiting a slender girl came slowly down the stairs, carefully polishing the bannister and the post at the end. She said nothing to Catlin and didn’t even look at him, she seemed to be counting intently under her breath or possibly praying. She was wearing a fine wool kirtle of a rose colour that suited her fair complexion and a brocade false front to her petticoat so she looked a little overdressed for a lady’s companion. Perhaps a sister to Mrs Craddock?
“Leave it alone, will you, Phyllida, for God’s sake?” said Mrs Ashley’s voice, an odd combination of weariness, impatience and something else... Concern perhaps? Sorrow? Catlin turned to look. “Go and rest.”
The girl sighed and turned to the matriarch. “Now I have to do it again,” she said in a fragile toneless voice, “from the start.”
Mrs Ashley rolled her eyes. “Why? You’ll only wear it away.”
The girl shrugged as she went slowly up the stairs again. “It’s worth it if I kindle,” she muttered.
Mrs Ashley sighed heavily and watched the girl trailing her way from step to step. She had taken her apron off, he saw. Then she scowled at Catlin as if he had caught them in the act of doing something illegal or embarassing. Young Daniel was standing by the fireplace, staring into space as usual.
“Come Mr Catlin, what must you think of us?” she said in a false high voice and led him into the parlour where there was a fine oak table with benches and two large chairs, a large cup-board displaying immaculately bright silver plate. “My daughter Phillida Craddock is not well as you see, she... Ah... Have some wine.”
She poured more wine into his Venetian glass goblet and he drank, impressed at the quality of the wine. Catlin felt awkward. In fact he wasn’t really used to being invited into the house of a suspect. Usually he went in behind a boot and a battering ram.
“That girl is Mrs Craddock?” Catlin asked.
Mrs Ashley’s face was frosty. “She is married to William Craddock Esquire, barrister at law, yes.”
“Ah...”
The girl drifted through the parlour counting under her breath, turned and went back again. Through the open door to the hall, he could see she was polishing the bannisters again. Catlin stared, burning with curiosity as to why the wife of such an obviously wealthy man should be doing her own polishing while the mother-in-law dealt with the far more important matter of salting meat for the winter. She was a slender little thing, ghost pale and hardly really filling her stays.
“So is Mr Craddock expected...?”
“I believe he is at the Inner Temple library,” admitted Mrs Ashley, “I expect him home later.”
“I can wait,” said Catlin.
The woman’s jaw set, she inclined her head with what was meant to be courtesy and poured herself a glass goblet of wine which she held by the stem with such force that Catlin wondered if it would break.
Phyllida drifted past again, counting, Catlin was sure of it. Mrs Ashley followed his eyes and her face was suddenly full of pain.
“My daughter has a... belief,” the older woman said heavily, “She greatly desires a baby and alas... my son in law has given her... no baby. She believes that if she paces fifty steps and polishes the newell post of the stairs fifty times, she may conceive.”
Catlin’s eyebrows went up to his hairline, very nearly. “I never heard of such a thing,” he said disapprovingly, “It sounds very Papist.”
Mrs Ashly snorted. “Of course it’s a stupid superstition,” she snapped, “But if I prevent her doing it, my daughter weeps and refuses to eat.”
“And Mr Craddock? How is he after his... er... his distemper?”
Mrs Ashley had very sharp grey eyes and they looked at him a little fixedly. “He is a great deal better and is preparing papers with no ill-effects.” The chill in her voice was strong. Catlin felt the familiar thrill of excitement: he was hitting the true ore here as he dug. Best keep digging.
“There’s a great deal of talk about at the moment about Mr Craddock seeing the Devil in Fleet Street,” Catlin pushed, “Does he...”
“He was disordered by a megrim,” snapped Mrs Ashley, “I don’t believe he could truly see such things and the whole nonsense stopped after Mr Cheke gave him a dose of laudenum.”
The girl drifted
back across the floor, still counting and Mrs Ashley’s lips tightened to a hard bloodless line as she watched.
“Mr Catlin, may I ask what your business is with my son-in-law? Is it a legal matter..?”
“No, madam, it is related to the two women... three, rather, who have recently been hideously murdered.”
The woman’s face was stony. “I heard of it. Two notorious whores and a witch,” she said. Catlin inclined his head. “Investigating? Why?”
“Mr Recorder Fleetwood is concerned because the other whores, of whom alas there are many in and around London, might riot or incite their upright men to riot if another is killed in such a fashion,” he said. Mrs Ashley’s grey eyes were chips of granite in her head. “And the means of it is so unnatural they are afraid it might be the Devil, perhaps the very one that Mr Craddock saw.”
Silence. Mrs Ashley drank from her goblet slowly, her fingers bloodless.
“It certainly is a terrible thing,”
“The whores think so.”
“And do you think Mr Craddock may have seen this... Devil the whores are afraid of?”
Catlin shrugged and smiled. He had no intention of actually discussing what he would say to Craddock once the bloody man turned up, especially not with a mere woman and the man’s mother-in-law to boot.
Silence fell again. They watched the pale child in her self-imposed penance. At last she stopped her pacing and polishing.
“I’ll rest now, mother,” she whispered, heading wearily for the stairs.
“Can I make you something to eat, my dear, perhaps a posset...?”
The girl shook her head. Mrs Ashley sighed again as her skirts rustled from sight.
“All will be well with her if she can only fall with child,” she said, as if she had forgotten Catlin was not one of her gossips, “Her attacks of the mother will cease – it’s always the way with a maiden, they are naturally subject to hysterical fits until their hysterum be properly anchored by a baby. Until then it is apt to wander all over the body, with the results you see.”
Catlin was surprised at such learned speech from a woman – she sounded almost like a physician.
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