Paul Lawrence - The Sweet Smell of Decay

Growling, I stood my ground. ‘Where is Keeling? I want to talk to him myself. He does not know the full circumstances, he cannot.’

‘Mr Lytle,’ the chief aide barked, straight-backed, patience all but gone. ‘Richard Joyce will hang tomorrow. The Lord Chief Justice instructed me to tell you. He also warned me that you are a young man, inexperienced in life and appointed by consequence of political games being conducted by the minor nobility at Court. He will not see you now, nor in the future, and if you do not leave, then you will be escorted out of here all the way to the Tower.’

‘When did Keeling tell you all this?’ I eyed him suspiciously. ‘Today? Did he put all of these words into your mouth? Is he waiting upstairs now to hear the outcome?’

‘I told you where he is. He is at the Palace.’ There was poison in his voice.

‘You must postpone the hanging until I have had the chance to talk to him.’

‘The hanging will proceed even if you get down on your knees and confess to the murder of Anne Giles yourself.’ Contempt flickered across his face.

That was it! I was fed up of being spoken to like a fool. I was going to check for myself. Striding past the chief aide, I pushed him to one side and headed towards the staircase, but even as I stomped upstairs two of the King’s Guards appeared above me to block my path. They descended with intent and picked me up by the elbows so that I could walk only on my toes. I kicked out at one of them and caught him on the top of the thigh, then I wriggled free of the other and turned to the chief aide who had followed me up the stairs and punched him as hard as I could in the side of the face. He went down on his knees and I was buried underneath the two guards who set about me with their fists. Lying there being pummelled, it occurred to me that I could have handled the situation better.

‘You will go to the Tower until after tomorrow is finished.’ The chief aide stood up with his hand to his cheek, and his wig crooked. ‘Thank God, Mr Lytle, that I don’t charge you with common assault.’ The words sounded strangely rehearsed and he disappeared quickly up the stairs and out of sight.

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.