Paul Lawrence - The Sweet Smell of Decay

By the light of the gaoler’s torch I could make out Joyce’s thin shadow in his cell, still and unmoving, hear the quiet wheezing of his steady breathing, see the lice crawling slowly across his close-cropped scalp.

‘George,’ I turned, ‘I will give you another five pounds if you get this man upstairs in front of a fire, unchained and proper food inside of him. If the officers of Lord Keeling return, then by all means fetch him back down, but take him up again when they have left. Can you do that?’

‘Not for five pounds.’ George screwed up his face and shook his head. ‘Ten pounds.’

Ten pounds? Ten pounds was enough to keep Jane going for three months. Ten pounds was a tenth of my entire wealth. And what chance was there that the King would reimburse me — half of London was owed by him. Anyway, I didn’t have ten pounds with me. I looked at Dowling. George was his friend.

‘I’ll be wanting that ten pounds today, sir.’ The gaoler tapped me on the shoulder. ‘Though it’s an extravagant way to use your money. He’ll be hung and quartered before the week’s out.’

‘What makes you so sure?’

‘They say they found the necklace on him. That’s what matters. They said it was the dead girl’s necklace.’

‘Where did they find it?’

‘They said they found it on the floor.’ He stuck his thumbs in his belt and waddled away. Then stopped. ‘That reminds me. I was going to tell you. There’s two fellows out there what work for a justice somewhere up north. I forget where exactly, but I recognises them.’

‘Out where, George?’

‘Outside in the street with them apprentices. You can sees them if you look hard enough — them’s the ones with the hair on their faces.’

‘Do you know what they’re doing there?’

‘No idea,’ George gestured with his torch. ‘Told myself to tell you. Now I told you.’

Dowling grunted, but thumped the gaoler on the shoulder gratefully. We made our way back the way we’d come, pushing past the two men that still stood staring hopelessly into the stinking closet. I felt my stomach cramp again, and pushed my way outside. Ten pounds.

‘So you be Lytle.’ The man with the baton waited for us. Now he had two, one in each hand. One he lifted to my chin, the other he used to warn off Dowling. ‘You here with your bears?’

‘Let him be,’ Dowling grumbled from the pit of his stomach.

‘Your eye’s black too, Dowling.’ The man held his arm out straight. Others began to crowd in, pushing forward to see what was going on. I recognised the drunkard, with his square red hat drooping over one eye, still grinning foolishly.

‘Honey or turd with me, wretch. Stand away.’ Dowling’s arm whipped out and grabbed the baton, twisting it out of the man’s grip. Then he stepped forward and brought it down hard on the arm that reached to my chin, with a cushioned crack. The man doubled over in pain, nursing his broken arm across his chest, and sunk to his knees white-faced.

‘Haste now, Lytle. We have one opportunity,’ Dowling whispered in my ear, pushing me forward roughly into the crowd. We strode forward, fending off the occasional blow with our arms. Dowling cracked another man over the head with the wooden club, and pushed forward with all his considerable strength against the wall of apprentices, always with an eye for the youngest, the most hesitant, the drunkest. Something hit me on the temple, causing me to stumble in dizzy pain. ‘Up!’ Dowling roared, grabbing me by the collar of my shirt and dragging me upright. I felt the stitches tear. Struggling to stay on my feet, I was propelled forward by Dowling’s shovings, stopped from falling by the wall of people against which I was being pushed. I looked up into the purple face of an older apprentice, pockmarked and gleaming, teeth clenched and eyes blazing. Then Dowling’s baton landed on his nose with a heavy crunch and the face disappeared. We were pushed up against the woodwork of a yellow coach that was engulfed by the crowd. I looked aloft, holding up an arm to ward off the blows. Was that the face of Shrewsbury pulling away from the window? Could it be? I clambered up to get a better view, and saw William Hill sat in there too, to my amazement. Neither of them saw me, their efforts focussed on avoiding the eyes of the multitude that swarmed about them. I was pulled roughly backwards by a pair of mighty hands. Dowling again. He pulled me towards an alley mouth, next to the open door of a bawdy house. The noise abated, and the heavy hot air was replaced with a cold, sharp wind and we were running. As we ran, I wondered to myself about the necklace, tucked safely in my pocket. For if it was indeed planted by these men, where did they get it? It must have been taken from Anne Giles’s body. What did this imply of Keeling’s involvement? And what the boggins was Hill doing with the Earl of Shrewsbury?

John Parsons was waiting for me outside my home. He stood in the street with a sick smirk upon his wretched face, attracting curious glances. People walked round him. When he saw me he leered. I approached reluctantly. What possible good could this satisfaction signify? He didn’t wait for me to speak — I had nothing to say to him in any case. He bid me escort him to a low house in Mincing Lane. It wasn’t far away and I followed him in silence. When we arrived I could not believe what he showed me there.

The hovel he took us to consisted of rough-hewn planks of wood standing precariously against the sturdier wall of a two-storey house. Parsons stood in front of the open front door with his hands clasped before him. He took off his hat and urged me to enter. The front room was small and damp. Rat droppings peppered the bare boards. A door stood ajar behind. Parsons didn’t speak.

‘Is she in there?’ I asked, pointing at the room behind.

‘Of course.’ Parsons smiled. Seriously I began to wonder if I had ventured into a world of demons, for he had an air of unworldly evil about him that made me fearful. He said nothing else, just stood there. Suddenly I was sure that this man had done something unspeakable, that he had reneged upon his commitment. There was a thin line of sweat upon his brow and his eyes betrayed a manic intensity that burnt from his soul.

‘I assume you kept our pact,’ I said levelly, sure that he had not.

‘In a manner. I did not test her myself, but it was my judgement that she be tested without delay, else her familiars would have had time to plot her release. I arranged for another to test her, which he did.’

No noise came from behind the door. As I approached it, I could smell the same sweet sticky odour that lingered about Dowling, only whilst on Dowling it was faint, buried beneath the smell of pig grease and other Newgate smells, here it was pure, fresh and overpowering. A loud buzzing of flies.

The first thing I did upon entering the room was to empty the contents of my stomach on the floor. I will not dwell upon what I found, for I don’t wish my account to become unpalatable to all but a perverted few. So I will stick to the essentials. I think I half expected to find Mary Bedford dead or mutilated, so this was perhaps not a shock. What appalled me was the state I found her in, and the fact she was not alone. There was another woman in the room; barely recognisable as the woman that Dowling and I had spoken to near Whitefriars, the simple harmless soul that had told us second-hand tales of witchery. They lay side by side stripped of all their clothes. They had not been drowned, nor had they been watched, for their interrogator clearly had not sufficient patience. This, I suppose, must be called searching, but whosoever had done this had searched them with tools the like of which I could not imagine. Every orifice was stretched and torn, leaking pools of blood. Short, sharp cuts and long rounded channels; I will not relate what I saw in greater detail than that. But someone had used implements made of iron or some other metal, to penetrate deep into their bodies; in search of what … I still have no idea. They were both dead. Mercifully.