A Murderous Affair Read online

  ‘Probably been rounded up and invited to spend an afternoon in the Clink,’ quipped Greville, when I commented on it.

  ‘As you will be, if you don’t keep that dagger out of sight,’ warned Buck good-naturedly in return. Weapons were banned in the city, especially today of all days.

  Lacking their usual inhabitants, the streets were a strange mixture of proud merchants and their families, wide-eyed foreign visitor clinging to their purses, blue-clad apprentices looking for mischief on a rare holiday and an array of other citizens and commoners, all caught up in the febrile air. Amid the chaotic hubbub, street stalls cashing in on the event sent tempting aromas into the air. Musicians, dancers and street performers were drawing crowds of young and old alike. Even the three of us began to drop our natural cynicism as we started to get transported by the mood – not to mention the proximity to many pretty maids, who had ventured out in force for the day and could often be caught pointing at the three of us and giggling.

  It is difficult to explain the euphoria that had gripped the country since the Armada had been defeated. Months of worry and insecurity had been followed by preparation for war and a grim determination against what amounted to overwhelming odds. Buck, Greville and I had all been mustered to fight, Buck and Greville at Tilbury with the Earl of Leicester, where they had already witnessed a visit from the Queen. When the threat had finally materialised, we had all gone through the same emotions of fear, bravado, and real courage, followed by rejoicing, patriotic fervency and a downright feeling of superiority as the Spanish ships had been washed away, like the excrement of Love Lane on a rainy day.

  Along the route of the procession, people were leaning out of windows, standing on balconies and ranged along the city walls, even climbing flag poles and drain pipes in order to get a better view. Wifflers in coats of velvet and chains stood along the edge, halberds raised, to prevent the crowd from spilling forward. Ludgate itself, which had been recently rebuilt after years of falling into disrepair, was filled with people at every vantage point including the turreted roof, where some gripped onto the statues of King Lud and his sons.

  The three of us pushed our way through the crowd, which was as much as a dozen people deep, trying to find a good vantage point. It was not made easier by the obstacle of a set of railed stairs, set up along the route to give preference to merchants and artisans – the true citizens of London – who wore long black gowns lined with red, and held ensigns and flags denoting their particular trades. Although these flags made a very fine spectacle, they made it difficult for those with a less privileged position to actually see what was going on. Eventually, after being shoved on a couple of times by over-zealous wifflers, the three of us managed to clamber onto the Ludgate Hill stocks, fortunately emptied of their occupants for the occasion, where we stood a head above the crowd in a rather precarious position from which one or other of us periodically toppled off, usually when trying to have a surreptitious swig out of one of the flagons of ale Greville had had the foresight to bring.

  There was still some time to wait before the procession and so we passed the time sharing provisions and good-natured banter with our neighbours. Suddenly though, a new mood of anticipation transmitted itself from the crowd outside the gate to those inside, and we knew that the procession was on its way.

  The Queen was preceded by a fine pageant of a thousand men on horseback, including nobles, admirals and even foreign allies of importance. Many of the latter were dressed in clothes of overtly continental fashion and some of the more fervid members of the crowd took great delight in heckling these gentlemen as they rode past.

  There was one gentleman, in particular, who stood out. He was wearing a bright red-and-gold doublet and hose, cut in the Italian style. Enveloping his neck was a fat, cream-coloured ruff, made up of intricately-woven lace, which impressively set off his handsome, if somewhat haughty, features. The outfit was embellished by a rich velvet cloak, which was slung stylishly off one shoulder to flow down the flanks of his horse, and a wide-brimmed hat sprouting feathers representing all of the colours of the rainbow, and some others besides. The overall effect was to make him look like one of those exotic talking birds that sailors were fond of bringing back from the New World.

  This poor gentleman’s humiliation was increased by the fact that he had a Mediterranean complexion and looked every bit the Spaniard, increasing tenfold the jeering and laughter flung in his direction. I had to grudgingly admit, though, that he did a good job of holding his large, crooked nose in the air, adopting a manner of complete disdain for the seething masses, as he passed along the narrow channel.

  The exotic stranger was soon forgotten as more and more riders came through the arches of the gate, many of them carrying keys, crosses and other symbols of their standing in society. By now fully committed to the path that would see me at such a disadvantage when Nesbitt arrived at my lodgings, Buck, Greville and I continued to drink voraciously and cheer or jeer, according to what the occasion called for. Suddenly the crowd subdued into a muted hush as the Queen’s train passed through Ludgate – part admiration, part awe, part fear caused by the proximity to her bodyguard, the Gentlemen Pensioners, who ran along beside her wielding halberds. The Queen, resplendent in a silver dress, sat on a raised chariot, pushed along by footmen in crimson velvet running suits and black skullcaps, with a golden canopy raised above her head. Her pale face was expressionless, cold even, as though she was somehow from a different sphere altogether. Accompanying her walked the great heads of state – Burghley, Hatton, Somerset, Walsingham – their faces a mixture of determination and pride. My brother was amongst the gentlemen following the Queen’s chariot and I found myself staring at him – he all too oblivious to my presence amongst the crowd. As the remnants of the procession passed, I was left with an impression of him – aloof, dignified, belonging – his future secure.

  * * *

  That chilly, overcast afternoon on the Rotherhithe bank, I threw off thoughts of how the rest of the previous evening had developed – celebrations and jousts in the streets, the dash south across the river for the beginning of the Southwark Fair, games and drinking in diverse inns and taverns, eventual oblivion in my lodgings – and concentrated instead on the pitiful, battered remains of the dead man.

  There was no sign of the huge cream ruff, nor of the feathered hat, but much of his rich clothing was still intact – there was no doubt that the proud foreign gentleman from the Armada procession was raising his nose indifferently to the sky one last, and final, time.

  Chapter 3

  ‘We are continually dying: I while I am writing these words, you while you are reading them.’

  (Francesco Petrarca; Letters)

  The discovery of a foreign corpse on the banks of the Thames was quite a coup for the Rotherhithe Watch. There were six of them in total, including the boy, and judging by their eager, curious faces, discovering washed up bodies wasn’t a regular occurrence.

  For months the whole country had been rife with paranoia about the threat of invasion from Spain, or the infiltration of undesirables such as spies and Catholic priests, and the ‘Watch’ had become a regular feature of life around the English coast. Their instructions were to look for anything suspicious along the miles of empty stretches of coastline and report it to the Parish Constable or Officer of the Watch, who, in turn, was supposed to inform some higher authority.

  Just like the ragtag group standing before me, ‘the Watch’ usually consisted of small bands of men and youths deemed worthy to protect their country, whilst foregoing the burden of payment. The country was still on high alert and the Thames estuary was considered a particularly likely place for an illegal landing. Looking for spies, however, was nothing like as much fun as it sounded and being a member of one of these numerous groups was largely a thankless task – conducted during the night, invariably in intemperate weather, and tending to yield little by way of success, let alone excitement. They were also poorly trained and not part
icularly adept at spotting their target. Consequently, most of them were ready to lynch any innocent stranger just to liven their routine up a bit.

  Besides, landing a boat on a deserted coastline was a risky method of entering a hostile country. Most undesirables preferred to simply arrive in disguise at one of the main ports and walk straight into the country with little in the way of bother. I remembered my father laughing as he told me about the Jesuit priest, Robert Persons, still unaccounted for, who had swaggered his way into the country disguised as a captain of the army returning from the Low Countries: ‘dressed in a coat with a gold lace trim and a feathered hat’. My father, usually a mild-mannered man, could barely conceal his scorn as he recounted how the port authorities were so impressed by this brave adventurer returning from battle that they went out of their way to find him a horse and send him on his way to London with their sincerest blessings. With that kind of professional security in place, it was hard to imagine the amateur patrols achieving much success.

  There was one odd one out, an older man with a forced air of respectability and a marginally better quality of clothing, which is to say that it wasn’t muddy, torn, and reeking of fish. There was something pious about him, which indicated the church. He kept himself slightly apart from the others as though wishing to avoid any misinterpretation of his status, although I sensed that he wanted to be just as involved as the others.

  I turned back to the body, feeling the cloying dampness of the men closing in around me. I ordered them to stand back so I could have some light, although it was mainly to alleviate their unholy stench.

  Although a stranger, it still felt eerie to be examining the lifeless body of someone seen alive in all their glory and finery only a day earlier. I looked closely at the man’s disfigured face and tried to concentrate on what more it could tell me, rather than getting distracted by the shocking injuries. He was closer to forty than thirty, although still with a thick head of dark black hair and a short, fashionable beard. Also, there was no doubting his foreign appearance, despite the ravages of the river, his skin being far darker than the pasty faced natives surrounding me.

  Other than that, the features were hardly recognisable and I doubted whether anyone who knew the man well would have been able to convincingly identify him by his face alone. The nose was broken and cut, there were large patches of red and purple bruises covering the surface of the skin, and, most tellingly, the gruesome eye socket, which was now of use only to one of those modern doctors interested in how the human body was put together. There was also severe bloating of the skin, caused by being in the water, which gave the head an eerie appearance of unreality. It best resembled some of the more mistreated heads that Nesbitt and I had seen earlier on Traitor’s Gate.

  I turned the head from side to side and looked closely at his ears. On one side there was a neat hole where I imagined I had seen a large studded earring during the procession. On the other side there was a nasty tear through the skin. Had the force that had caused the injuries to the face been sufficient to rip out an earring as well, or was that the work of the men standing around me? Hard to tell.

  I concentrated on the rest of the man’s body, trying to ignore the eager gaze of my audience. Immediately, I could see that the trauma continued down the whole body. The fine red-and-gold striped clothing, that had looked resplendent in the late Autumn sunlight, was torn and shredded, and one of the sleeves had been partly torn from the shoulder. Down the arm and through the gaps in the remainder of the clothing there was evidence of the same bruising and colour disfiguration of the skin.

  Thinking of the man’s wealth I looked for a purse around his waist but there was no sign of one. Reaching for each hand in turn, I also saw that there were no rings on his fingers, although an impression on one finger suggested that he had clearly worn at least one. The nails on both hands were well manicured, but the unnatural position of some of the fingers implied they were broken.

  With my own trembling in the cold, I started to undo the clasps on the rich velvet doublet, which fastened right up to the chin. It took me an inordinate length of time to undo the first clasps and start to pull the doublet and the woollen undershirt apart. Underneath, the flesh was bruised just as the face was but there was something even more sinister, a deep unnatural line pressed into the dark skin of the man’s neck that contrasted markedly with the rest of the injuries. I chose not to undo the doublet further, preferring to hide what I had seen from the men of the Watch, although a quick glance up at Nesbitt, who had taken up a position to one side of me, indicated that he had seen the tell-tale signs of strangulation.

  ‘Help me turn him over,’ I said.

  Nesbitt knelt beside me and we heaved the stiff body onto its front. There were more tears in the cloth and under clothing, and more cuts and bruises on the man’s back. I noticed, rather incongruously, the man’s boots were still on his feet and that rich, blue stockings were visible around his knees. I eyed the boots enviously. They were in fine condition and looked to be my size.

  Slightly ashamed that this thought had so readily crossed my mind, I turned my face upwards towards the men who were standing round staring intently at what I was doing.

  ‘Where did you find him?’ I asked Pinchkin Senior.

  ‘Right ‘ere on the bank, Master, as the tide went out. We pulled ‘im from the water’s edge and put ‘im on this piece of driftwood.’

  ‘What time was this?’

  He thought for a moment, a calloused hand scratching his stubbly chin. ‘Reckon t’was an hour before dawn.’ He looked at the others for confirmation, receiving one or two nods. ‘We passed this spot a few hours earlier and it weren’t ‘ere then.’

  An hour before dawn was roughly six o’clock. I did some loose calculations in my head. It couldn’t have taken more than two hours for Pinchkin Junior to reach my brother’s house and Nesbitt had come calling after one. Assuming that Pinchkin senior wasn’t lying, that allowed for a few missing hours when I supposed the men had stood around discussing what to do with the body, whilst probably helping themselves to any trinkets that were still intact. For the moment, I decided to let that pass.

  ‘Why didn’t you go to the local constable?’

  ‘Well ’e was … unavailable, sir.’ The hesitation suggested that the constable was either asleep, drunk or both. Those particular methods of evasion hadn’t done me much good.

  A thought occurred to me: ‘How did you know the seal was Lord Rokesby’s?’

  At this question the better-dressed man pushed himself forward from the position he had taken up, slightly apart from the fishermen. He had an obsequious manner and clearly loved the sound of his own voice.

  ‘That was my contribution, your Honour.’ His address caused me to smile grimly to myself – if only he knew who I really was.

  ‘Go on,’ I said, baring my teeth in what I hoped was an encouraging manner.

  ‘Thomas Radclyffe, your Lordship, the verger of the local parish. Sir Robert Rokesby is the Over-Marshall of our glorious county of Kent. I naturally recognised the seal at once.’

  ‘I took the seal to Master Radclyffe as soon as we found it,’ piped in Pinchkin Senior, eager not to be left out of the glory. ‘I knew if any round ‘ere would know it’s true meaning, it’d be ‘im.’

  ‘Where was the seal and chain?’

  ‘Around the man’s neck but caught on the clothing so it hadn’t come loose.’

  ‘You’ve had a good look at the body, have you? Was there any jewellery on the man when you found him? Or a purse?’ I addressed this directly to Pinchkin Senior, looking him squarely in the eye.

  ‘None sir.’ A slight hesitation, nothing conclusive.

  ‘You realise of course that stealing from a corpse is a serious felony?’

  The men shuffled uneasily but no one said anything. I looked at the verger, Radclyffe, in particular, but he had suddenly discovered a speck of dirt on his tunic. Again I decided not to pursue it. The men had demonstrat
ed a modicum of honesty by identifying the seal and sending word to my brother. They could have pocketed that as well and tipped the body back into the water. Besides, I was pretty certain they hadn’t murdered him, which, under the circumstances, seemed a more pressing matter.

  ‘Who else knows about this man apart from the six of you?’

  ‘No one, sir. I went to fetch Mr Radclyffe, and we returned forthwith.’

  ‘And none of you have any idea who he is? There were no clues when you found him other than the seal?’ They shook their heads in unison.

  ‘When I saw his skin colour, we thought ‘e must be a Spaniard from one of ‘em ‘mada ships.’ This opinion was offered by a belligerent-looking fellow who had hitherto gone unnoticed. His jaw jutted out in an aggressive manner and appeared to support only a solitary tooth. I considered his suggestion as I stood up, knees aching from crouching over the body. It wasn’t completely stupid, the country was awash with stories about Spanish sailors clogging up English beaches, but I dismissed it.

  ‘Unlikely. No Armada ships have been close enough to London to deposit a body in this area.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s a spy?’

  ‘Or a Jesuit priest?’ another of the men chipped in. ‘I ‘eard that they caught a Papist trying to land on the North bank only a month ago.’

  ‘So no one else knows about this?’ I snapped, eager to put an end to the speculation they had clearly been rehearsing before my arrival. ‘No wives or children wondering where you’ve got to? No passersby?’

  ‘Like I said, just the six of us standing here. We ain’t let a soul see the body, nor discussed it with anyone.’