The Sweet Smell of Decay (12 page)

Listening to his steps fade I wondered if he was running straight to Keeling. I lay squashed beneath the two burly guards that beat me. My arms were pinned to my sides, and I took the blows without complaint or struggle, for I could feel no pain, and had lost all hope. My chin was pushed hard against the floor and my arms were pinned behind my back. The blows from the two soldiers became weaker as they tired. I lay still. They pulled me roughly to my feet and bound my wrists. I was hauled down the stairs out through the front door and into the street. There was a small garrison waiting outside the front door, reinforcing the notion that my visit was anticipated, my petulant behaviour predicted. I felt foolish, and avoided the eyes of the guards that had attacked me. They picked me up and threw me across the back of a horse. Looking at the dirt I cursed my stupidity.

The garrison dispersed, only half a dozen accompanying the guards as they led me towards the City. When we reached the end of Whitehall the guards stopped and threw me about so that I was sat upright, a more dignified position. They undid the ropes that bound my wrists behind me and tied them so that my hands were secured around the horse’s neck. In this position they led me into the City, through it, and to the end of Tower Street. Our little procession attracted the attention of all, delighted jeers from some who assumed that I was a convicted criminal and hoped for a pillory or a hanging, more subdued jeers for the soldiers from others that assumed the same thing, but suspected the royal motive, and puzzled stares from others that wondered what it was all about. Throughout it all I stared forwards, avoiding the temptation to glance sideways, afraid that this might be what the mob
was waiting for, the ones tossing vegetables from one hand to the other. It took us a while to cross the top of Fish Street Hill, but otherwise we made reasonable time, mercifully. We emerged onto the familiar fields of Tower Hill. The guards pulled me off the horse just before they reached the Bulwark Tower. Thank God.

‘Mr Lytle, I have been asked to tell you that your job is finished,’ the biggest of the two guards spoke with his head bowed so that I couldn’t see his eyes.

‘Asked by who?’ I snorted, looking around at the soldiers and the other guard.

‘Your job is finished.’ The guard took off his coat and handed it to his colleague. His biceps were thick like a man’s legs. He turned round and met my eyes for a moment. He looked sad, upset even. Then he drew back his fist and hit me full in the face.

I woke up lying on a bed. I couldn’t see out of my right eye. I tried touching it, very gingerly. My eyelid was much further away from my face than it should have been, and was very tender. Sitting up I pushed aside the curtains. A small, square stone room, dominated by a tall fireplace built into the wall, and a large double-arched window. I stood up slowly with the flat of my hand over my eye and shuffled to the window, which looked out towards the river. A very familiar view.

In the brickwork just under the sill, I found the heart carved into the wall with a big ‘E’, the handiwork of Giovanni Castiglione, one-time tutor to the young Queen Elizabeth. Next to it were the twelve signs of the zodiac, connected to each other by a criss-cross of lines surrounded by small squares and strange inscriptions, handiwork of Hugh Draper
of Bristol, imprisoned there a century ago for sorcery. This was the Salt Tower. The Wakefield Tower where I had worked, day in, day out, these last three years was just fifty paces away, down the Outer Ward.

Few prisoners were ever brought to the Tower. Most people were locked up in Ludgate, Newgate, or elsewhere. I supposed that I should feel privileged. The last to be held here before being executed was, ironically, an ex-lieutenant of the Tower, a signatory to the death warrant of Charles I. Sir John Barkstead’s head was still stuck on a stick above St Thomas’s Tower. It had been two years now since he had been hung, drawn and quartered. Not much was left hanging from the skull. It had been said that before he died he had hidden the sum of twenty thousand pounds in butter ferkins and buried it all in the basement of the Bell Tower. Men had searched for it for days, weeks and years, so far without success.

It was also said that the intelligence was a ruse, the revenge of Barkstead’s mistress who was a bit strange since the death of her beloved. A mad old woman, I had seen her once. Isaac Penington and Robert Tichborne were also ex-lieutenants, and were also both regicides. Penington had died two years ago; Tichborne was still here, somewhere. He had been sentenced to death, but upon pleading youth and inexperience had so far been allowed to live. He would die here eventually, or else on Tyburn.

Looking out over the yard below, I watched the soldiers, sitting in circles playing cards and drinking cheap wine from unstoppered bottles. What a shambles. The King’s Lodgings, the Queen’s Lodgings and the Royal Wardrobe were all long deserted, now derelict, tapestries removed or rotten, murals
faded or chipped and eaten away. Now the Tower was infested by rats and by people, six hundred of them, somehow – clerks, messengers, salesmen, tailors, shopkeepers, innkeepers, bricklayers, labourers, carpenters and painters. Soldiers everywhere, sleeping, drinking, lying around. The White Tower, House of Ordnance and New Armouries were now used to store arms. The Wakefield Tower stored records. The mints stored coins. What had once been a palace was now a giant warehouse.

Night fell. Rats came out to play, running across the floor of the room overhead. I felt wide awake for some strange reason, not a hint of fatigue or weariness. Calm. There was nothing I could do. I had tried my hardest, done my best, and voiced my opinions to all that mattered. What more could I have done to save Joyce? Would it have made any difference if I had spoken diplomatically, if I had managed to control my irritation and impatience? Perhaps I could have caught up with Keeling by some other means, but I doubted it. Just as I doubted that Keeling kept a battalion of guards outside his front doors every night.

I sat there for hours, staring into the darkness. The yeoman peered through the bars of the window at me. I could sense his curiosity, wondering why I was sat there, unmoving. He came by every ten or fifteen minutes, until eventually, with great caution, he opened the door to ask me if I was all right. I wondered if Joyce was enjoying the same human consideration.

I reflected on Jane’s advice, advice I hadn’t found time to impart to Dowling. Joyce was to be freed from prison tomorrow, though not in the way Jane meant. Mary Bedford had been found, though again not in the way that Jane meant. I had gone to see Hewitt despite her warning. That meant I
had the brain of an old hog. The only thing I hadn’t done wrong was to spend more time with John Giles. Time to rectify that later.

I felt very lonely that night. For the first time in my life I felt I had no real friends. It was an awful feeling, an unrelenting tug at the pit of my stomach.

A few hours later I contemplated the birth of a new grey winter’s day, long and cold.

They let me out very early. The cobbled walkways and courtyards were empty as I walked beneath the blanket grey sky. Birds sang frantically, no doubt trying to keep warm. Through the fog I saw the outline of a large man the size of a wine barrel waiting outside the Bulwark Gate. It could only be Dowling. What words of wisdom would he have prepared for me?

When he saw me he hurried over, took my hand as if to shake it, but instead gripped it hard and squeezed it, whilst peering into my swollen eye. In truth I must have looked terrible. I hadn’t slept well, the eye throbbed – as did most of my ribs and both my thighs, and I felt like my head was floating two feet above my neck.

‘I’m well enough. Tell me what happened while we walk.’ We made our way slowly up Great Tower Street up towards the City.

‘I was allowed to see him in the morning.’ He walked with his shoulders scrunched, hands in pockets, looking at the dirt beneath his feet. ‘I stayed awhile, waited for them to come and collect him.’

‘How was he?’

‘Calm. He told me of the trial. They made him stand before the Lord Chief Justice with his back to the court. The Lord Chief Justice said that he would not look into the face of Satan. Various fellows, one after the other, all appeared before the court and told the same story, that they had seen Joyce running from Bride’s with blood on his hands, screaming like a devil, with black spirits clambering about his back, attacking him with their talons. He was there two hours listening to the same tales. At the end of it the Lord Chief Justice asked him if he had anything to say. He said, “I think the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that government that he hath not a voice to put himself under.”’

‘Fine words,’ I noted, dubiously.

‘They were Rainsborough’s words at the Putney Debates.’

‘Of course.’ The Putney Debates took place twenty years ago, at a time when the army still pretended to rule in place of the King. Rainsborough was a Leveller.

‘Aye, but the Lord Chief Justice flew into a frenzy according to Joyce. Jumped to his feet and started shouting and screaming. He had to be becalmed, while Joyce just stood there wondering what he’d said.’

‘Odd fish.’

‘Aye. Anyhow, Joyce had a better perspective than we did on the certainty of his fate. He was resigned to it.’ Dowling laid a meat plate on my shoulder once more. ‘He bore you no malice, Harry.’

I didn’t need Joyce’s perspective to establish the futility of my efforts. ‘What next?’

‘The old cleric from St Andrew Hubbard came, the fiery fellow with wild white hair. He had been drinking beforetimes to give himself strength methinks. It was he that hung the cross round Joyce’s neck. Then they bound him tight. They were all in there, pushing him, prodding him, waiting for him to struggle so they could give him a good beating, but he didn’t protest at all. But then, just as they’re leading him out, he turned round, and spake out clear as you like, ‘Villains!’ I thought they would beat him then, but he stared right into their eyes, standing to attention like an old soldier. He looked like a soldier too, even with the cuffs of his jacket halfway up his elbows and his trousers halfway up his knees.’

We walked on past the Custom House, towards the Bridge. At the crossroads with Fish Street Hill we had to stop and wait in a crowd of pedestrians, carriages and sedans. As more traffic arrived from behind we found ourselves jostled and cramped.

‘What’s going on?’ Dowling shouted to a coachman a few yards ahead, up on his seat.

‘Turkeys,’ the coachman shouted back, shrugging, ‘thousands of them.’

Dowling strained his neck above the melee and fidgeted a while, then apparently resigned himself to the delay. ‘He stood there like the King himself, looking down on them like they was brutes, which of course they was. You could see they saw it too, didn’t know how to respond. Then he looked at one of them and said, “Thou art dull indeed.” Thou art dull indeed! As God’s my witness, it was the funniest thing I ever saw! The cleric called them to order, told them to stop their growlings and get him to the cart.’

Didn’t sound funny to me. There was a clearing in the crowd just ahead of us. Two men ran frantically in circles chasing the birds. ‘Did you go with the cart?’

‘They allowed me as far as Sepulchras. After that I made my own way to Tyburn. My cousin set his own cart up there. There was a big crowd outside Newgate blocking the gate and stopping the cart from setting off. There were four that went, Joyce and three others, but the crowd was there for Joyce. They threw apples, some old cabbage, but it just bounced off his head. The throwing soon stopped because the guards were having it worse than Joyce. Two of them went into the crowds with their sticks.’

‘Who were the other three?’

He pulled me by my jacket, stepping nimbly between a sedan and a woman carrying a pail on her shoulder. I tried to keep up with him so he wouldn’t stretch the cloth. ‘I don’t know, none was interested, it was our Joyce they talked about. But they were all three of them drunk as lords. They started to sing as soon as the cart began to roll. Only Joyce wouldn’t take a drink. Like I told you, I went with them as far as Sepulchras. The mob was quiet there, wanting to hear what the clerk had to say, listen to the prayers. He gave each one a small bunch of winter flowers. The drunkards took them and made fun of him, which made the crowd angry. They were angry at Joyce besides, for he just ignored the flowers. The clerk tossed them into his lap in the end, had done with it.’

‘He was bound, though, you said?’

‘Well aye, he was, that’s true, and the only one bound. Reckon they thought they’d keep him tied for his own protection. The other three wasn’t. They all three took the ale keenly enough, sat around telling each other stories. Like an
alehouse on wheels it was, but with Joyce sitting in the corner like Death.’

The crowds pressed in, squeezing me up against the wheel of a coach. Dowling eased me forwards and off it with one trunk-like forearm. People started to shout, complaining at the squash. Just as I thought my ribs might break, the pressure was relieved and the crowd surged forward. We were carried with it, Dowling as helpless as I, over the crossroads, turkeys running in a panic about our feet, feathers everywhere. At the first opportunity we stepped off the main thoroughfare and into narrow Candlewick Lane. A turkey followed us, gobbling and grumbling.

‘I left them there and hurried off to Tyburn. Took me best part of half an hour, the crowds were so thick. No room for a horse or coach. I had to run around the alleys and side roads, but he had a good spot, my cousin, only twenty yards from the gallows. Getting to it was the problem.’

I stopped to take a breath. The crowd had pushed hard onto every tender spot on my body. It felt like I was being beaten up again. I waved away Dowling’s fussy concern. ‘Go on.’

‘The mood was altered by the time they got to Tyburn. Joyce was still in a world of his own, if you ask me. But the other three had lost their nerve. Either they didn’t have enough ale or else had too much. Twitching and scratching, wiping their brows and hair, rubbing themselves, licking their lips. They were looking for salvation by that time, but the guards were roused. Having pushed their way through the mob for three miles, been spat on and thrown at, they were of a wicked, foul temper. The crowd had eyes like foxes staring at chickens. Whichever way you looked there was a sea of heads. God’s eyes, did they get frightened! They started running
about the cart, looking to jump off it into the crowd. Course, the crowd thought that was great fun, just kept picking them up and throwing them back in. Great sport it was, until one of the guards climbed up and started thrashing about with his stick. Then the three of them quietened down, just sat there shivering, terrified almost to death they was, poor souls. Must be a lonely feeling. Hearing the big roar, knowing it’s for your own death.’

I felt sick.

‘Packed to the galleries, it was. They had two wooden stands set up and they were full. Must have been six or seven thousand. Hanging from windows, perched on the rooftops, leaning from poles and sills. Anyway, as they come up to the gallows, Joyce stood up. The women screamed, all frightened and excited. But Joyce just stood there grinning, grinning I tell you. I never saw anyone look less afraid. People was throwing things at him, but somehow they all missed. Some poor fool hit one of the soldiers with an orange, soon regretted that. The soldier lets out a bellow louder than the bells of Paul’s and goes running after him with his pike. Then the crowd sets on him, and it’s a right mess. There was almost a riot.’

‘And Joyce was alright?’

‘Oh aye, he was alright, surveying it all like a badly dressed angel. Things quickened up a bit then; I think the soldiers were keen for it all to end. Four of them lifted him right up into the air for everyone to see. That got the crowd roaring again.’ Dowling took a deep breath. ‘Then I think his nerve failed him a moment. His knees buckled and he looked up to the sky with his eyes wide open and his mouth gaping. He said something, I don’t know what, then fell down and the soldiers had to carry him.’

I felt my eyes fill. ‘God have mercy.’

He put an arm around my shoulder. ‘Aye, but then he righted himself. He stood up straight again and looked out at the crowd. I could see the right-hand side of his head clearly. Peaceful, I swear.’

‘You’re pulling my leg.’

‘Well, you may say. But I tell you I never saw a wrinkle of remorse. At peace with himself, he was.’

‘Aye, well hopefully some others saw that too.’

‘People come to a hanging for the show, Harry, they don’t come for sober reflection and philosophy.’

‘So then they hung him.’

‘Aye. The crowd shouted so loud you must of heard it in the Tower. Hangman put the rope round his neck and the crowd went quiet, waiting for him to beg for his life. Holding its breath.’

‘Did he beg then?’

‘No, just looked up at the sky. The other three were crying and wailing like women, but Joyce actually smiled, grinned over the top of the rope that was wrapped around his throat.’

‘You go too far.’

‘I’m telling you he smiled. Once the horse was smacked – well
then
he shat himself, his tongue popped out and started going black and all those things, but before that, he smiled.’

I looked away. ‘Did they cut him?’

‘Aye, they cut him,’ Dowling growled and scratched at his cheek. ‘One of the soldiers took a blade and cut him from his groin up to his ribs. Three cuts. Did it well.’ A look of respect came into his eyes for just a second. ‘Then he reached inside his gut, pulled out his innards and set them alight in front of his eyes. Though I think he was dead by then. Then they let
him down and cut him into pieces, showed the crowd his head and his heart.’

‘I wager the crowd enjoyed that.’

‘The mouths of the wicked devoureth iniquity.’

I really had to sit down, and Dowling saw it too. I persuaded him to come with me to a coffee house close by on Eastcheap. We found ourselves a quiet spot where we sat in silence for some minutes, while we waited for coffee to be poured and while I waited for the worst of the pain to subside. Dowling sat with the top of his head forward, looking into my eyes with his mouth set grim. This was not the self-assured Dowling of a few days ago.

‘So, Davy,’ I managed to speak without my ribs breaking, ‘Mary Bedford is dead and now Richard Joyce. Neither our doing, but I don’t give much credit to our efforts neither. Do we stop here – tell the story that the affair is ended with the hanging of Joyce? You and I both know it wasn’t he that did it.’

‘Aye,’ Dowling nodded gravely, ‘and we have the husband to consider.’

John Giles, of course. The chicken running headless while the fox sits complacently in its lair biding its time. ‘What do we do, then, about Hewitt?’

Dowling wriggled on his seat. ‘I will talk to the Mayor again, but it will not be easy. He will want to know why we concern ourselves with Hewitt now that Joyce is dead.’

He was right. The Mayor would be a waste of time. ‘I will go to Cocksmouth,’ I said. ‘Perhaps I can establish the source of this mystery there. There is some devilry at the root of this which I do not yet comprehend.’

‘Would you have me come with you?’ Dowling asked.

It was kind of him, but he didn’t know what he was volunteering for. I declined the offer and we went our own ways.

Cocksmouth. Cocksmouth was north and west, beyond Buckingham. It was a long journey and I would be gone from London at least three days. Plenty of time for reflection.

My father was not an educated man, a deficiency that I did not hold against him, God knows. Yet I could not fathom why he made such importance of the need for me to study at Cambridge on the one hand, yet behaved with such stubborn disregard for good logic and sense on the other hand – if ever it came from my mouth. Whatever opinion I expressed, observation I made, could be guaranteed to elicit contradiction. The same determination that I should enjoy greater fortune than he appeared to stir a bitter jealousy against me. His head was like a sealed globe within which wild storms continually raged. Whenever he opened his mouth a violent gale blew. My own policy to deal with such contrariness was to remain silent in his presence. The fewer words I spoke, the kinder the climate. So. Tomorrow to Cocksmouth. Birthplace of my mother’s ancestors. A place where pigs foraged before finding themselves strung up with their guts sliced in the front room of my uncle’s house. Godamercy.

I walked south, deep in gloomy thought, pushing through the crowds on Cornhill, heading for the bridge. I walked straight, taking no notice of the tradesmen striding down the streets as if they owned it, shouting out their wares so that all could hear within a half-mile radius.

I hated Shrewsbury and Keeling, and all like them. Before I had never cared, they were the distant purveyors
of venerable wisdom. Now they were cold calculating politicians, supreme saviours of their own skin – and hunters of mine. It was mid- afternoon and London’s walls felt oppressive, the crowds pestilent. I strode out onto the Bridge and marched down the middle of the road, avoiding the clamourings and cajolings of the shopkeepers. By the time I reached the wooden drawbridge to the Southbank I was sweaty and my temper had subsided into a mere simmering brew of resentment. As the mists thinned I became more aware of my surroundings. I passed beneath the arch of Nonsuch House. Its copper-covered cupolas shone like blood. I turned to gaze upon the heads that waved stiffly on the end of tall wooden poles, grinning teeth and dull hair coated with a fine layer of freezing frost. A peeling face stared sadly at me from the top of its pole with dull mouldy eyes as it swung over the edge of the archway. The meat on the head was white and torn. I recognised Colonel James Turner, wealthy goldsmith and embezzler. I looked into his eyes, noted the jagged cuts about his neck, the ragged state of his head where the crows had been feeding. He had been loved and respected once. Not any more.