Do We Not Bleed

by Patricia Finney

  There could be no sin, he thought, in confiding Isabel to God his mercy, nor in hoping that perhaps she was... No. She was judged and damned now. He had better face that fact, as Calvin had taught it by unimpeachable logic and scriptural authority.

  In the end he said the Our Father. Afterwards he stood, wondering what to do now. He was alone in the crypt. He looked carefully around – was anyone watching? Since he was already damned... He was alone.

  He went up to Isabel's body, pulled back the cloth that covered it and laid his head on her cold breast as he had loved to do, kissed her greasy bitter-tasting ear and her face, rubbed his face in her hair which she had always dyed out of its unbecoming red. Then he stepped back, covered her face decently again...

  He ran up the steps where he nearly cannoned into Fleetwood's man coming down.

  "We got to go, sir," said the man, still nothing but kindness on his ugly face, "I 'eard the boys shouting "clubs!" "

  Catlin felt shaky again: it was the apprentice boys' warcry and it meant they were out. "Where should I go?" he asked. The sounds of the key turning in the lock boomed like metal drums. For some reason his head was swimming and he was feeling feverish.

  "Wouldn't come with us, sir," said the man, "The prentices might go for you if they can't find Craddock."

  He had nowhere to go. So he sought sanctuary and went into St Bride's dark church and sat at the back on one of the benches by the wall and leaned his head back against the cool whitewashed wall to listen to the thundering of his heart. The door banged as the two men left him and trotted away uphill to Fleet Street where the trouble was beginning. No condemnation there still. Why not? Catlin wondered.

  Neither do I condemn you, came a quiet kindly voice in his ear, so clear he looked around to see who it was, only there was no one there. Go and sin no more, it continued.

  He was sweating with the heat of his sudden fever and his lips felt strange and swollen, still bitter from his frantic kissing of Isabel. Did he have plague? And so what if he did?

  Isabel was standing in front of him, holding her guts in and shaking her head.

  Catlin yelped with fear and reared back against the wall. Isabel changed to a man and then back again and the man was himself. The two went back and forth while the middle of the church was suddenly filled with fireworks.

  Catlin was terrified, he tried to hide from the ghosts and demons, burrowed his way into the corner of the church wall, panting with terror and whimpering like a child.

  "Sir, are you well?" came a voice. Catlin yelped again and then saw through the swirl of Isabel's face that an old lady in a stout blue kirtle was looking at him. She was quite short and round and was carrying a broom in her hand. This terrified him even more. Surely witches were abroad in London and the demons were out to celebrate.

  "I... I..." he gasped.

  She came forward and helped him back onto the bench. As her rosy round face came close to his and he flinched back, she paused and her nose wrinkled as she sniffed.

  "Hm," she said, fishing under her kirtle for her petticoat pocket and pulling out a coarse hemp hankerchief, "You wipe your face with that now, it's all dirty."

  Her voice had a motherly command in it, so he did it and as he did the figures of Isabel and the swirling colours began to fade. He could see that this was only an old woman here, perhaps not even a witch since she was actually sweeping the floor with her broom rather than riding it.

  "Hm," she said, blue eyes narrowed in their crumpled rosepetal beds. She took the kerchief out of his hand and bustled to the font in the corner of the church, dipped it into the holy water there and came back with it, then dabbed his face carefully clean of oil and tears with it. It was such a kindly thing to do, it calmed him.

  "Are you the gentleman that came with poor Isabel," asked the woman.

  "Y..yes, I... I... thought I saw her ghost and demons... That was why..."

  The woman tutted. "Now my name is Nan and I clean this church and I'm a terrible old busybody, but I'm quite sure, sir, that you can see nothing evil in this Church because it is under the protection of St Bride and the Lord Jesus Himself and the water you just cleaned yourself with is sovereign against all such foolish phantasies."

  The common sense and complete certainty in her voice calmed him though something very odd was happening to his eyesight again and his mind seemed to be whirling in all directions at once. He wanted to tell her about his sin, even though Confession was a Papist abomination, he had to tell somebody and it had to be now.

  "I thought it was Isabel haunting me, walking to... to.. call for vengeance. She's in Hell, you know."

  "Sir, I'm sure she's not, she was a good... well, she was a kind woman, sometimes, and that counts, you know."

  "She's damned and so am I," muttered Catlin.

  Nan leaned her broom into the corner, sat herself down on the bench beside him and took his hand in hers. "Why sir?"

  "For venery, for desiring woman, for fornication..."

  "With Isabel?"

  "And with the whores at the Falcon and the false nuns at Clerkenwell and at Paris Garden and..."

  The little woman's eyebrows went up. "Dear me," she said, "You have been busy, sir."

  "I knew that as I was assuredly one of God's Elect, I could fornicate and take no harm," said Catlin, "But then I... I liked it too much. And I began to wonder if I was really saved at all?"

  Nan sighed and nodded. "To be sure, to think so is a kind of heresy though I forget which," she said.

  "So I went to the Falcon for information, you see, only that but then I was led astray again and on that very day, the old woman was killed...

  Nan's chin was on her chest. "Poor Kat Harbridge," she said softly, "I was so sorry for that. She never did any harm and tried to do all the good she could, for all the College of Physicians worked against her. There'll be more mothers dying in childbed in London now, you mark my words."

  Catlin ignored this irrelevance. "And now Isabel..." he gulped out. "I was... I was even thinking of marrying her... so as not to burn... But how could I? She's a whore... or she was."

  Nan's eyes were suddenly piercingly blue, as if they had turned to chips of ice. She raised her head.

  "Did you kiss Isabel goodbye?" she asked and her voice was so stern and cold that Catlin answered.

  "Yes," he said, flushing again, "I kissed her ear and her face and her... and..."

  "Was there anything greasy?"

  Catlin shrugged. "There was a lot of hair oil..."

  "Ah," She reached out so suddenly that he flinched and felt his forehead. "Yes, still feverish. How are you feeling now, sir?"

  "Better," Catlin admitted. His sudden sickness seemed to have mainly passed. Perhaps he had only been overwrought. He still felt hot and a little dizzy but the ghost of Isabel had gone and so had the strange whirling colours from the church's stained windows.

  Nan nodded to herself. "Yes indeed. Who is searching out the killer, sir?" she asked, "Is it you, Mr Catlin? Seeing you are an old pursuivant too?"

  "Not me by myself," Catlin said hastily, "Mr Enys is helping me and so is Mr Shakespeare, I believe, since he was one of those who found French Mary a week or so ago."

  "I'd like to talk to Mr Enys," said Nan seriously, "Where is he?"

  "Mr Enys has gone missing, Goody," said Catlin, "Or at least his sister Mrs Morgan says he is away from home and she doesn't know where he is. But she at least is safe in her Chambers now, I hope."

  "Yes. Perhaps I'll visit her. Would you like to stay here? Near Isabel? Even the apprentices will respect a church, I think."

  He nodded. He would. He might be able to pray as despite its Papist name, the whole church had been whitewashed and cleansed of the Papistical pictures all over it that even he remembered from his childhood. They had been quite scandalous, showing the marriage at Cana with drunken disciples and Jesus smiling over the vats of water as he worked the miracle, wearing a very odd-looking crown of vineleaves. It was still the
church of the Guild of Vintners, of course, who were no longer permitted to put on their near-blasphemous mystery play of the Wedding.

  Even the London prentices would respect this church. Perhaps. He could see why they might blame him if they couldn't get Craddock. He hoped they would, in a way. Perhaps he should go to Fleet Street and tell them what he had done, how he had betrayed Isabel. No. He would stay here and pray forgiveness for his incontinence and venery and cowardice.

  Pray forgiveness for loving Isabel. He would do it but he could not mean it. He hoped that God wouldn't notice that. Now she was there no longer, he knew he had really loved her. He had.

  He was still feeling sick and exhausted with emotion. So he dozed off where he was with his head tilted against the wall, not thinking to wonder where Nan might have gone to and why the door had banged shut. The church of St Bride seemed to breathe around him, bending a little inwards to protect him, as a cave might protect a crab that had been robbed of his shell.

  Nan was panting hard as she climbed the stairs to the very top of the rickety building in the old courtyard of the Temple which had once held the houses for the lay brothers of Whitefriars monastery, the Dominicans.

  She banged on the door, hardly able to speak. "Mistress," she gasped, "Mrs Morgan, please... let me in... I must... speak with you."

  The door was unbolted and opened and Mrs Morgan peered out. She had her mask lifted to hide her face again but when she saw Nan was alone, she opened up and let her in.

  That odd player Shakespeare was standing by the window, looking out anxiously The way he stood made Nan think of an argument, suddenly stopped. "Sit down Goodwife," said Mrs Morgan politely, "Did you have trouble with the prentices? You look upset?"

  Nan smiled at the thought. "No, I haven't been on Fleet Street." She sat down on the chest of clothes and caught her breath. She kept forgetting she was no longer a slip of a girl to scurry upstairs without paying for it after.

  "I think Mr Fleetwood will have the trained bands guarding the Craddock house and the prentices will be waiting for the roaring boys from Smithfield before they take the Devil out of his house," said Shakespeare. His right hand fiddled with the pommel of his shiny new poinard at the small of his back.

  "How may I serve you, Goodwife?" said Mrs Morgan, "I have some beer, will you take some?" Well, it was a pleasure to meet someone who still believed in the old ways that had badly gone by the board hereabouts in London. Nan accepted a horn cup of middling mild beer and drank it down quickly. It steadied her heart a little.

  "Perhaps you could tell me..." Mrs Morgan asked, with only a little impatience in her voice.

  Nan caught her hand and pressed it. "My dear friend Goody Harbridge said she knew there was a witch in London and there is." That got her attention.

  "Did she tell you the name?"

  "She didn't. But I can say it's certainly the witch that's been killing the women of the town."

  "How do you know?"

  Nan looked hard at Mrs Morgan. She was standing up, her mask forgotten on the table beside her. Jesu, the smallpox surely had made a mess of her face. But how much did she know about women's matters? It would have been better if the player were not there, but there was no time for secrecy now.

  "What do you know of hebenon?" she asked carefully. She knew the player's ears were pricked, in fact if he had been a cat they would have been swivelled backwards to listen, though he continued to watch out of the window.

  "Is it like witch's ointment?"

  "Indeed it is. It's what you get from henbane seeds which must be extracted into an oil or a grease – the vital principle will only go into something fatty, not into water nor aqua vitae for instance. Almond oil or goosefat are the best."

  "Midwives use it?"

  "The ointment, yes. It's a very powerful magic," said Nan, "And like most magics, it is also a poison if strong enough. Hebenon is the poison and it is always an oil. A little of it makes you feel hot and talkative. More of it and you see visions. More still and you become very cosy and fall asleep. And more than that... not a great deal more, mind, though it depends on the person and how big they are, whether they've eaten, whether they've had it before, many possibilities. All sorts of things."

  "What happens?"

  "You die."

  Mrs Morgan was silent, her lips open. "But..." Something seemed to occur to her. She started delving under her kirtle for her petticoat pocket and pulled out a grubby pillowcase that was slick with grease. She held it out to Nan.

  "I took this from under Isabel's head, I was wondering about her nit oil myself."

  Nan took it and sniffed it while Shakespeare watched, fascinated. "Yes," she said, "This is hebenon. The thing about hebenon, mistress, and this isn't usually known, is that you don't have to drink it. It doesn't have to pierce to the blood. All you need is to rub it onto your skin, especially where the skin is delicate, that's why midwives use the ointment. It helps ease the child and the mother at the same time."

  "Ah,"

  "But it's possible to kill with hebenon by simply pouring it into someone's ear."

  "I see."

  "What you do is you give the person a small amount by mouth so they feel sleepy and then when they're asleep, you turn their head to the side and pour the hebenon oil into their ear and then... Well, you wait, mistress. And they'll die quite quickly. The poison goes into the humours through the ear, straight into the phlegmatic humour of the brain and stops it."

  The player Shakespeare had given up all pretence of not listening and was staring at her. "Jesu, goodwife," he said, "Is that really true?"

  Nan nodded seriously. "It's well known to poisoners and alchemists and even some physicians know of it. I heard that there was a man tried to poison the Queen with a saddle – that will have been a strong hebenon oil rubbed into it."

  "Are you a midwife, goody?"

  "No, mistress, I never had the strength of mind. I only clean the Church of St Bride and try and live a good life. But Goody Harbridge was my friend and she told me about hebenon and I know she was afraid of this witch in London, for there are such things as witches, ma'am. They are men or women who think that the wonders of the world put there to help us by God are theirs to take and use for their own desires and for dominion over others. They misuse the wonderful gifts of God in herbs and plants and they will kill because it is convenient to them. Of course, many of them become witchfinders and burn such as me."

  Mrs Morgan snorted. "But they don't actually worship the Devil, surely."

  "I think they do, mistress. Only they call it Money. Or Knowledge. Or Godliness."

  "I don't think the women were killed for money, goodwife," said Mrs Morgan thoughtfully, "Not one of them was robbed."

  "Perhaps they were killed for curiosity."

  "What?"

  Nan shrugged. "They were all cut open and their innards taken out – I've heard the stories. That's why they think it was the Devil, of course, but the Devil would have no need to do that. Perhaps whoever did it was curious to know what is inside our skins."

  Mrs Morgan gulped and changed the subject.

  "So how do you think they were killed, starting with French Mary."

  "As I heard it, French Mary was not the first. There was a girl."

  "Yes, hardly more than a child and poor Peter's sister. But according to him, the same happened to her as happened to all of them."

  "Well then, somehow the witch got them to take enough of the hebenon to become confused, hot and sleepy. Mind you that would be hard to do – it's very bitter and would take a great deal of sugar to get down. Then, being hot they would take off most of their clothes. Being sleepy and confused, they would lie down to take a nap, as French Mary did in the part-built playhouse and Kettle Annie did in the alleyway and Isabel did in her room. And her business husband Catlin did just now in St Bride's, which is what gave me the understanding, for he had rubbed his face in Isabel's hair that was greasy with the hebenon and it was strong enough f
or the vapours of it to have him see her ghost and demons as well."

  "Good God," swore Mrs Morgan, somewhat to Nan's surprise.

  "It's all right, I got him to wipe it off and wash his face with St Bride's well water which, as you know, mistress, is sovereign against all ills including warts." Nan smiled at the woman and the woman smiled shakily back. "He just needs to sleep and then he'll be well and have no memory at all of what he saw when he was...."

  "It stops the memory as well?" Mrs Morgan asked sharply.

  "Yes, indeed, which makes it a very good poison. If the thing goes wrong, the victim will remember nothing about what happened."

  "Well then..." Mrs Morgan's fingers were working together as if she was kneading dough. "Well then... I know where Mr Craddock's Devil came from – he was hot, he saw phantasies and after disputing with the Devil and being calmed with laudenum by Mr Cheke, he woke up with no memory at all of what had happened."

  "But how did he get hold of hebenon?" asked Nan.

  "Perhaps it was in his bedchamber? I remember that Mr Craddock brought some new ointment for Mrs Craddock after he wasted hers. Perhaps he spilled it and got it on his hands and...."

  The player had suddenly started laughing. He tried to stop, but he was doubled over with it and his face went red.

  "What?" said Mrs Morgan with a great deal of irritation, "I don't think this is very funny, Mr Shakespeare."

  "No," gasped Shakespeare, wiping his eyes with his sleeve, "No, it isn't. Not at all funny. You're right. He must have got the ointment on his... er... on his hands. Or the hebenon oil. Quite so. Yes."

  "Yes but this doesn't make sense," said Mrs Morgan, "I always thought it must be something to do with Mr Craddock because of the connection with poor little Mary, but if it was his own poison, he would know better than to get it on him..."

  "Or rub it somewhere sensitive..." sniggered Shakespeare making a lewd schoolboy gesture.

  Finally understanding what was making him laugh, Nan and Mrs Morgan both stared at him with great disapproval. He spread his hands and gave a smirk. "Sorry, ladies," he said. "And don't scowl at me, it wasn't me that did it."