The Sweet Smell of Decay (22 page)

It was a relief when the poacher returned early, for it gave me someone to share my doubts with, or so I thought, but he quickly dispelled that notion. Holding up his palm he bid me save my problems for myself. His task was clear, and that was all he cared to consider. No sooner had he arrived than he announced that he was going to rest. Entering his hut he closed the door firmly behind him, leaving at the door a pile. Sorting through it I found an old shovel (robust), old clothes (clean and voluminous), a pickaxe and an oil lamp.

Setting off at last, shortly after the sun’s rays had deserted the little clearing, we both rode on my horse, since he seemed to have none. I rode and he sat squat behind me with his thick, stubby arms wrapped about my waist, his head pushed hard against my back, his grip uncomfortable. He had not ridden much before – that was clear. We navigated by grunts, he grunting at me when he wanted me to turn left or right, instructions upon which I was dependent, for the evening was darkly gloomy and I had no sense at all of where we were headed.

I don’t know if it was a long journey or not, for I have never returned to the hut of Simon with the big knife, but it seemed to take no time at all. Soon we were sat together on the horse, peering into the darkness over the wall of the church into the graveyard.

‘No time for pretty thoughts nor womanly misgivings. It would take me half the night to dig that grave – I fancy it will take you half a week.’

The dwarf poacher slid off the horse sideways, freed the shovel, pick and oil lamp from their bindings, then stood waiting for me to tie the horse. I led it off the main thoroughfare and tied it to a tree that was enveloped in black shadow. The
poacher marched off into the graveyard assuming that I would trail him. We walked deep amongst the stones, the night sky cloudless and blue, and a light wind the only noise. I recognised nothing from my previous visit.

‘This one,’ my partner whispered, pointing with a crooked finger after he threw the shovel and pick to the ground. ‘I will make sure you that none disturb you, but you had better dig quickly, for your arms are thick as twigs. The day will come sooner than you think. I will get this lit.’

He disappeared into the night with the lamp, leaving me alone. Soon all I could hear was the gentle dancing of the wind, the sound of leaves rustling. It was mild and calm, not a night to be digging up corpses. I ran my fingers through the grooves of the stone letters of the gravestone. The luxury of a minute or two of tranquillity. When the poacher returned with the oil lamp lit, he stood with a hand on one hip with a look of disgust evident, though I could see only one side of his face in the lamplight. Taking off my coat I laid it on the stone, picked up the shovel and started to cut the turf into large squares for peeling off the soil beneath. He made no move to help, just stood watching for a few minutes before grunting in apparent satisfaction and disappearing once more into the night.

The soil was soft, the autumn having been wet and mild. This gave me enormous encouragement and I dug with great gusto, forgetting for a while what I would do when I struck wood. That was until again I was struck by self-doubt. What if the poacher still planned to betray me, had decided that to deliver me in the act of gravedigging would be more rewarding? What would happen to me if I was caught here, now? They would hang me by the neck – Keeling would see to it. I dug even faster, out of fear now, reflecting on the stupidity and
foolhardiness of my even being there. I contemplated throwing the shovel to one side and running as fast as I could. I stopped digging for a moment, listened to the silence, waited for my body to recover, the pounding in my ears to slow. Was the poacher still out there? Picking up the oil lamp I stepped out tentatively into the darkness.

‘Where you goin’?’ a low voice growled into my left ear. A small scream escaped my lips and my bowels came to within a sneeze of emptying themselves into my drawers. Gritting my teeth I growled, hating the poacher for frightening me so badly.

‘I wanted to be sure you were still about. I couldn’t hear you, nor see you.’

‘Nor will you.’ The poacher wandered towards my hole. ‘That’s half a hole, best dig the rest.’ He turned his back on me again and disappeared.

It was still night when my shovel hit the lid of the coffin. The contact was solid, the wood still strong. Clearing the lid right the way across the bottom of the hole, I discovered in the process that my hole was too narrow on all sides. Tired and sweating, my muscles ached and my fingers were raw and swollen. Then the lid was clear enough. I reached out of the hole for the pickaxe, readied myself, then said a little prayer before swinging it.

The corpse was dry and shrunken, skin drawn tight like tree bark, brown, ridged and hard. Yellow teeth stood bared, exposed by the withering of the lips. The eyes were gone, dried and shrunken like two small peas. An awful sight, but no worse than I had imagined. The smell was as a dead fox or dog, no worse than that. The face had no expression on it, it was just a dried-out shell.

Reaching for the oil lamp I stood it as far away from the
hole in the wood as I could. The body was still clothed, but the cloth was thin and easy to tear. It resembled nothing more nothing less than a giant seedpod. I could not take the pick to her, the thought made me ill. Nor the shovel. I stood straight and took lungfuls of clean air. My hands were shaking and my stomach cramped. Jumping out of the hole, on impulse, I was suddenly fearful. Where was the poacher? Simon with the big knife? Calling out his name softly, I waited. Turning slowly, listening for a sign of his approach, I called again.

‘You finished?’ He emerged from the gloom.

‘I need your knife.’

I will not relate the detail of what followed. It was disgusting and unpleasant. Sufficient to tell that the corpse opened like a dried fruit and was hollow inside with no sign that a smaller corpse had ever lain there.

Once I had filled the hole, replaced the turf and taken my leave of Simon with the knife, I headed directly to the house of John Stow. My goal was achieved before the sun showed its face and I would be away from Epsom before dawn, but I wasn’t leaving without hearing what Stow had to say. My trousers were seeped in mud from ankle to thigh, my skin was raw and cut, I could feel the sweat and mud encasing my face like a thin mask. No matter. If I scared him to death, then he would deserve it. I tied my horse to the same great oak tree. The cottage was silent, the windows dark, and the chimney lifeless. I walked up the little path and tried the door. It was locked, so I knocked, hard, and kept knocking until I heard movement within. The same small woman as before opened the door to me, slowly. Her face paled and her eyes rolled and there was a loud thud as she landed on the floor. Pushing the door firmly open, I stepped over her body still sat upright, and
headed straight for the staircase, following the weak flickerings of candlelight. Stood over his bed I looked down on the small, round, bald patch in the middle of his thin brown hair. He was still fast asleep, faced away from me.

‘Mr Stow,’ I announced myself loudly. Mrs Stow appeared again, peering round the door, wide-eyed and shivering. A brave woman, I considered, and I held out an outstretched palm in an attempt to reassure her. ‘Wake up, Mr Stow!’ I poked him in the ribs with a stiff forefinger. Rolling round to face me, slowly with eyes still closed, scrunched and squinting, he made a disgusting grunting snuffling noise – like a little pig.

‘Methinks you were not expecting me to visit you, else I would not have found you here.’

Stow’s breathing stopped entirely and his eyes opened slowly.

‘Methinks that someone told you I would inform
them
of what you had told me, and that I would not bother you again.’ I crouched down that I might see Stow better in the moonlight. The hairs in his nose were still and unmoving. ‘Methinks they gave you money.’

Stow pulled himself up in the bed, his eyes wide and unblinking, scanning my filthy face and soiled clothes.

‘What say ye?’

Nothing.

‘I told Ormonde this story, that Keeling’s daughter was with child when she died.’ I stared into Stow’s face, watching to see if he told truth or lie. His little mouth fell open, his brows climbed so that they touched the fringe of his mousy hair.

He licked his lips. ‘That was a secret that I told you.’

‘I fancy it wasn’t a secret, Mr Stow, I fancy that it was a
lie. No matter for the moment, because I did not tell Ormonde that it was you that told me. I have not told that to anyone yet. I was keen to do so, yesterday, but now methinks I will not allow it to be told further afield until I have checked the truth of it with Lord Keeling himself. In that case I will be bound to share with him the source of the intelligence,’ I smiled, ‘unless you confess to me yourself that it was a lie, in which case it will be forgotten.’

‘Aye,’ Stow whispered, looking round for his wife, ‘it was a lie.’

‘And you were paid money.’

Peering up, aghast, he stared in horror at my stiff face. ‘Aye, I was paid money. I was told that other men would come to check the rumour, and that so long as I denied it then, that nothing more would come to pass. I would deny that I had told it thee.’

‘Who paid you money?’

He looked at me, horrified. ‘I will never say.’

It was no matter, I reckoned I knew the answer anyway. ‘Why did Jane Keeling throw herself into a pond?’

Stow shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Methinks it was an accident, though Beth Johnson insists she writ a note. None other saw it. Anyhow, there were no marks on her, no sign of a struggle nor a blow. That’s the long and the short of it.’

‘You are a fine actor, Mr Stow. You should be at the playhouse.’

‘Thank you,’ Stow mumbled, not looking up.

‘Farewell.’

Alsatia was quiet. Those that had business abroad scurried out of their hovels like cockroaches in search of morsels to eat, infesting the City like vermin. Those that had nothing to do would wait until the freezing dawn gave way to something warmer before surfacing. We reached the narrow alley without being bothered and slipped into its black shadows. I was dressed in Dowling’s butcher clothes I had worn before. Suitable attire for interrogating Hewitt, the mood I was in.

‘Methinks they may be home at this hour,’ Dowling whispered. Thomas and Mary, I supposed he meant.

Inside was empty. The pigs and chickens were gone too.

‘The way of the slothful man is as a hedge of thorns; but the way of the righteous is made plain.’ Dowling suggested happily. Thomas was out working, in other words.

I snorted, ‘What does this man Thomas do to earn his bread?’

‘He labours honestly, but knows not how to store his daily bread once earned.’

‘I suppose he sells stolen pork and chicken meat as part of his righteous way.’ I kicked at the straw and wandered over to the corner, the great trapdoor. There was something on it, moving and rustling. I squinted in the darkness then – Godamercy! Disgusting! – It was a giant rat crouched nibbling at something, unafraid of my approach. I took a broken plank from the debris and threw it at the rat. It ambled off, though only to the nearest black shadow.

The door was closed, but not locked. The lock lay to one side and the chain was broken. There was something on it, whatever it was that the rat had been chewing. It was a piece of meat, a small steak, or an ox’s tongue. It was nailed there with a big iron nail. I poked at it. The rat squeaked. I stepped back suddenly, heart in my head, for it was a man’s tongue, cut off neatly at the root. I took several steps back and stood breathing deep, slow breaths, eyes closed, trying to control the nausea.

Dowling knelt next to it. ‘A man’s tongue.’

We pulled the door open together and descended the steps slowly. Hewitt sat where he’d sat last time I’d seen him, his hands and legs bound, his back against the wall. But now his head hung to one side and his jaw was dropped, mouth agape. Blood stained his chin and neck and soaked the front of his shirt. Half-open eyes, unfocussed, disgusted expression on his face.

‘Hewitt’s tongue.’ Dowling spat on the floor once we had escaped the scene. The rat crept back to the trapdoor.

‘Harry Lytle?’ A rough-hewn voice, with a deep crack in it. Turning, we saw a swarthy-faced man, six foot tall, broad
shoulders, with a mop of filthy matted black hair on top of his grizzled greasy head.

‘Who are you?’

‘It’s him.’ What did that mean? Who was he talking to? Three more men pushed into the room from outside. All of them were big, black-haired and unwashed, like great bears, ponderous but dangerous. They were dressed like working men or tradesmen: rough shirts with sleeves rolled up and bare chests.

‘Are you the ones who cut out Hewitt’s tongue?’

‘Not us, mate. You and he did that, not us.’ They all laughed, loud raucous laughter, hard-edged and mocking, cruel and gloating. ‘Make haste, now.’ His smile faded.

Reaching for our faces, two went for me and two for Dowling. One of them pulled my arms hard behind my back, wrenched them with a mighty force and tied them with a rope that bit into my flesh. A cloth was thrust into my mouth and I had to open wide, else he would have broken my teeth. He pushed it so far it made me gag and I had to bite down onto it despite its foul taste. Then a bag was pulled down on my head. It happened so fast and yet these men were so strong that there was no way to avoid it.

Someone seized my upper arm and pulled me forwards. Stumbling, I tried tripping gracefully forward with small delicate strides so I wouldn’t fall, but I fell anyway as I was pulled forwards faster than I could walk. Tripping over what must have been the threshold of the door, someone grabbed at my sleeve just as I went over. The winter wind cut through my trousers – we were outside. As we walked up the hill we were still pushed hard from one side to the other, for the sport of it I supposed. My head crashed against something sharp, right on
the fresh wound. Warm blood trickled down the back of my neck. Then we stopped and I felt a great hand grab me by the collar. We must be at the top of the narrow alley, I thought, preparing to advance out into Salisbury Alley. The alley was too narrow for horses, so they must be thinking of walking us up the alley in full view. I was pushed forward again, one man holding my left bicep, another holding my right bicep. Footsteps on either side, and then I was lifted upwards. We stopped again, my shirt almost severing my throat.

‘Who are ye? What’s your business?’ It sounded like the voice of the upright man, though I couldn’t be sure. The bag on my head rendered all sounds muffled.

‘Our business is none of thy business. Stand aside or suffer the consequences.’

The grip on my right arm tightened like a vice.

‘Unless I be much mistaken those is Davy Dowling’s legs I see running beneath that sack. If those be Davy Dowling’s legs, then your business is my business, for he be a friend of mine.’

‘They ain’t Davy Dowling’s legs.’

‘Well, they be Davy Dowling’s old trousers, and Davy Dowling’s old shoes. And those short stumpy legs, well they look like the legs of Davy Dowling’s friend.’

Short and stumpy? My legs were not stumpy. I heard a clatter, what sounded like a wooden truncheon tapping on the floor.

‘Out of my way,’ a voice growled just in front of me.

‘And what makes this all the more interestin’ is that Mary Hutch, what lives just round the corner, says that a group of soldiers, dressed most unlike soldiers, have just taken Davy Dowling and his friend out of her house, ’gainst their will.’ The upright man shouted now, a rallying call to the local neighbourhood.

A low murmuring became a buzzing and a roar. It sounded like we were in the middle of a riot. The air felt hot, and then I was being jostled and pushed. The hands that held my arms disappeared, and all I could hear was shouting and cussing, and the sound of men grunting. I tried pushing forward, but I was pushing against a wall of wriggling, shoving elbows and knees. So I tried to walk sideways, in search of a wall to lean against, determined not to fall onto the floor where I feared I would be crushed. I found my wall and dug my heels into the floor pushing myself against it. Bending my knees I rested most of my weight onto my right foot, which is where most of the buffeting was coming from. Then suddenly – light! The bag on my head was whisked off. I looked into Dowling’s solemn face as he pulled the foul gag from my mouth. Friendly hands untied my wrists. The alley was full of men, sweating and panting, clapping each other on the back and congratulating themselves. Women and children leant out of first-floor windows enjoying the entertainment. The earth floor was dug up and rutted as if a herd of cows had been chased down the alley. Hats and shoes lay discarded and torn.

The upright man appeared next to Dowling, his sharp teeth glistening, his brown eyes alive and darting. He had a long cut down one cheek, but didn’t seem to know it. Picking up his truncheon he laid it across his shoulders with arms resting on it, like he was tied to a cross. I wiped the dust off my face and looked up the alley to see what was happening. A pile of men sat on three of our assailants, pinning them to the floor. They were covered in dirt, and stared out from beneath the human pyramid with scared faces.

‘What’ll they do to them?’ I demanded, ridding my hands and wrists of the last of the rope.

‘Same as we’ll do to him.’ The upright man pointed back the other way. Four men were holding the last soldier, while two more tied his chest and stomach to a massive cartwheel. Wriggling and squirming, he kicked and screamed out at the top of his voice, but none would hear outside of Alsatia, for the excited celebrations of the crowd drowned out his frantic protests.

‘And what’s that?’ I asked, afraid of what the answer might be.

‘We’ll cut off his arms and then we’ll cut off his legs, then we’ll wheel him down the hill into the river.’ The upright man leered.

And this was civilisation.

‘I’ll thank you for saving our lives,’ Dowling said quietly to the upright man, fingering his jaw.

‘It be a pleasure, Davy Dowling, I know that ye’ll return the favour one day.’ The upright man swung his truncheon through the air and turned to supervise the execution of the first soldier. A man appeared with a short, squat little axe. Its blade was chipped and blunt.

The faces of those that still lay squashed stared out in terror. Yet there was no possibility that the crowd would be deprived of its entertainment. ‘Can we go?’ I pulled on Dowling’s sleeve.

‘Aye. There’s nothing to be done here.’ Dowling replied in a hoarse whisper. He pulled me back into the alley. ‘God will not cast away a perfect man; neither will he help evildoers.’

I suppose.

‘I promised Mary and Thomas ten shillings,’ he looked to my pocket.

‘Make it a guinea,’ I replied wearily.

We made our way quickly back up to the top of Salisbury
Alley, moving fast, without talking to one another, keen to put as much distance as possible between us and the horrors that were taking place behind us. Hewitt’s murder was all the more confusing. If he was the murderer, then who had motive to kill
him
? Someone that could command soldiers – but to what end? If he was not the murderer then why kill him? As a convenience? But Joyce was already hung – why go to the trouble of killing Hewitt besides? Before we parted company I suggested that Dowling take advantage of his connections with the Mayor to go search Hewitt’s house now that he was dead. Perhaps there would be a letter there, or a diary, or best of all a confession signed by all involved. I would find Hill and attempt to get some sense from him as to what this latest development signified.

Hill was not at home and nor were his shoes. I was tired and could think of little else to do, so went to the Crowne leaving message that I would wait for Hill there. Perhaps not the safest place to be, given that we had quite possibly precipitated the death of a powerful merchant, but it served good ale.

As I sat and supped and watched ordinary people going about their ordinary lives, it all seemed absurd. Hewitt now a victim, apparently not the man that killed Anne Giles, nor the man that butchered her husband. Why then had he behaved so strangely? Why had he sent men to kill me? It made no sense. With Hewitt dead and Hill’s Epsom story exposed as the fraud it so clearly was, this left us then with only one other account – Prynne’s bizarre theory of Fifth Monarchists, treason and plot – for which there was no evidence whatsoever. In the meantime someone else would have us dead, someone who could command soldiers to do
his deeds. And my father was still missing. All very odd and no mistake.

I watched a large fellow scratch at his balls and pass comment to a friend that I could not hear. It was clearly funny, since both of them laughed with great gusto. Strange to think that we all lived in the same world, yet they felt safe and happy and I was alone and in great danger. All I needed was a change of face, so that none would recognise me.

‘Mr Lytle?’ Hill’s maidservant appeared next to me, flustered and ill at ease, eyeing warily the men that cast her sly glances. She handed me a note and was gone. The note was from Hill, of course, though I didn’t recognise the writing.

Meet me at Bride’s at ten. News of your father.

It was fifteen minutes before. I left the mug unfinished and hurried out.