Paul Lawrence - The Sweet Smell of Decay

‘Aye,’ Dowling said softly.

‘He picked up the body with two hands. The little man stared up at the big man in terror. He wriggled. His face was white and every muscle of it was drawn tight. The big man said something to him before he threw him off, but I couldn’t hear what it was. Then there was a snapping noise. It was only then I saw what he’d done, tied one end of the rope to the hook.’

It made me feel ill just to think of it again, the sound of a joint being ripped from its socket. I wouldn’t be eating chicken legs for a while.

The slaughterer turned to look us in the eyes. ‘I tell you, the man who did that murder is a devil and will ne’er be forgiven. It was planned to cause most pain and most spectacle. By God you should have seen that little man’s face. He knew what was going to happen before it happened. I would rather be hung, drawn and quartered.’

It was quiet in the room. Neither of us could think of anything to ask or to say, and the slaughterer sat in bitter silence.

‘Thank you, sir. I think we’ll leave you for now.’ Dowling picked up his hat. The slaughterer muttered something that neither of us heard. We found our way out quietly, the slaughterer’s wife having hidden herself away somewhere, as far away from her husband and his experience as she could get. We walked slowly back towards Newgate Street.

‘You know, I am not so sure now that Hewitt is our man,’ Dowling whispered into my ear. ‘Before, I was certain.’

‘Aye, unless we can show that he is acquainted with a giant that wears a scarf and hat.’

This was not all that troubled me. Baptists. I wanted to talk to someone who could help me understand better the significance of the religious connection. Despite every best effort, I could think of none better than Prynne for that.

I went to the Tower straightaway, though it was late, for I wanted to talk to Prynne alone. The porter at the Bulwark Gate looked at me strangely but was not disposed to engage me in conversation. Miserable low dog of a fellow. Speaking of loathsome creatures, I bumped into Wade on his way home for the day.

‘Harry Lytle! Truly as I live!’ he exclaimed, wrinkling his nose and grinning. ‘What’s news in the world? Your custom is out, so we hear? Labouring for the King himself, so we are told? This is something like!’

‘Aye, something like. Would you do me a favour, Wade?’

‘What favour?’

‘Ask Prynne that I would see him over at John’s Chapel.’

‘Tell him yourself, I’m going home,’ Wade retorted, looking most offended. ‘Why would you meet him in John’s Chapel anyway? It’s a right old mess, no one’s yet been fain to touch it. No one goes near it.’

‘I need to speak to him alone, Wade. Give him the message else I promise you he will be vexed.’

Wade scowled at me, keen to be away, but his fear of Prynne prevented him from declining my request. Swearing and stamping his feet, he turned on his heel and headed back whence he had come. I hurried past the low portcullis of the Bloody Tower before climbing the slope beneath the cold shadow of the forbidding White Tower. I touched my forelock to a yeoman, a man I recognised. Stinking of wine, his eyes rolling, he was wearing only the top half of his uniform and walked unsteadily. I gave him wide berth. A group of five soldiers stood at the bottom of the wooden steps that led up to the Tower entrance, chatting, bored. I walked past without stopping. The White Tower stood the height of twenty men; its walls were thirteen feet thick. Commissioned in the eleventh century by William the Conqueror, it was built to serve both as palace and fortress. Nowadays it was used to store rifles, ammunition, and lots and lots of gunpowder.

At the top of the staircase I turned right, and climbed the spiral staircase to the first floor. The chapel was located at the top of the staircase before the entrance to the rest of the floor. The frozen winter sky shone chilling white through the arched windows over the nave, framing a simple wooden cross in silhouette. I walked across the stone flagstones, cleared of seating. To either side, in aisles behind sturdy stone arcades, were newly fitted wooden shelves, all of them packed tight with scrolls. Most were property rights for parishes towards the northern city walls. Dust hung in the air like fine white gauze. I waited there in one of the aisles, out of sight of any that might pass idly by.

Prynne was famous for having lost his ears — bit by bit. The flappy top bits were cropped thirty years ago before I was even born, after he published Histriomastix , a long, boring tirade against every form of entertainment that man had invented. In it he called women actors ‘notorious whores’, an insult said to be directed at the Queen. The King fined him, pilloried him at Westminster and cut the tops off his ears. Don’t know why he bothered. No one would have read the book if he’d just let it be. He was a frightening, furious man whose acquaintance I had avoided whenever possible when he had been my better and superior. Now I was free of him, yet here I was again.

‘Lytle?’ A familiar voice snapped, not much later.

‘Mr Prynne.’ I emerged out of my hiding place.

‘Thee would speak to me, Mr Lytle, before Keeling’s soldiers come to take you to Tyburn.’ His long face stared at me mournfully through the gloom. Walking towards me he ran a long crooked forefinger over the wooden shelves, eyeing the scrolls with steely resolve. I couldn’t help but stare at the long curls that covered his temples on their way down to his chin. Three years after Histriomastix he got into trouble again, this time for publishing ‘News from Ipswich’. I haven’t read that either — caring little what happens in Ipswich — but it is said to be another long, weary collection of your usual Puritan rantings, not stuff I’d think twice about if I was King. Charles, though, cut off the hard gristly bits of his ears and branded him on the face with a burning iron ‘S L’ — seditious libeller. Not what I would call setting a good example when it comes to toleration and goodwill unto others. But then what would I know? Prynne twitched his nose.

‘Sir, I need your counsel.’

Prynne snorted, though I could tell that he was flattered. ‘What counsel would thee seek of me, Lytle?’

Prynne had been in Parliament many years ago. He was kicked out for opposing the army, both their intention to execute Charles I, and their advocacy of religious toleration. A Puritan, he had been utterly opposed to Charles I’s policies, but he was no regicide. Now he was no royal confidant, nor was he a politician or schemer about Court — just an eccentric, old outcast. I felt I could trust him, yet I was wary. In him I saw something of John Parsons.

‘I think that the Lord Chief Justice may be involved.’

‘Of course he is involved. He is Lord Chief Justice, and put Joyce to death.’

‘Yes, which is strange in itself, methinks, that he should take such an active interest when the evidence against Joyce was so questionable. Since then I have found out that his daughter may have taken her own life ten years ago when she was with child. Perhaps it was William Ormonde’s child.’

‘William Ormonde’s child?’ Prynne’s old face turned a deep crimson. Standing silent, his thin body shook with wrath, eyes fixed on mine. ‘Who says so?’

‘The surgeon that found Jane Keeling’s body says that she was with child when she took her own life. When you consider the nature of Anne Giles’s death — an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth — and Keeling’s own behaviour in this matter — then it is easy to come to that conclusion. I think Shrewsbury heard the rumours too, though I am not supposed to mention his name, and I think he has laboured to have me discover it.’