P. Chisholm: A Murder of Crows

A bloated corpse lay on a trestletable between the various tombs and monuments of the crypt. The body was surrounded by candles to burn out the bad airs. They were not doing a good job. Hunsdon stood before the corpse, hands on his sword belt, his Chamberlain’s staff under his arm.

Carey bowed and so did Dodd. “My lord,” said Carey, “I was hoping that your business at the palace would be more pleasant.”

Hunsdon scowled at his son. “Eh? What are you talking about?”

Carey looked annoyed and uncomfortable. “I was hoping you might have been…ah…mentioning my unpaid fee to Her Majesty and…”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Robin,” growled Hunsdon, “she’ll pay it when she’s good and ready and not before. Meanwhile, look at this.”

Unwillingly, they looked.

“Besides she’s still in Oxford with the court or possibly heading back by now if she takes one of her notions. Odd this.”

Hunsdon gestured at the corpse. It was a man wearing a good linen shirt, skin waterlogged and flaking away, eyes and other soft parts already eaten by fish, stomach swollen and pregnant with gas.

“Who is he?” asked Carey, taking a handkerchief out of his sleeve pocket and holding it to his nose.

“Nobody knows his name and he’s in my jurisdiction, blast him.”

Dodd wanted to ask why but didn’t. However Hunsdon swung on him and said, “As Lord Chamberlain to her Majesty I am de officio President of the Board of Greencloth with a remit over any murder done within the Virge of the Court, that is, within two miles of Her Majesy’s sacred person or her palaces. The blighter washed up against the Queen’s own Privy Steps, so he’s my responsibility.”

With a lurch in his gut, Dodd realised the man had no feet. Carey was approaching the corpse, handkerchief still over his mouth and nose, looking carefully all over it and turning the swollen hands over. Dodd knew Carey had been spending time with Mr. Fenwick the Carlisle undertaker and he seemed to have got a strong stomach from it. The man’s left index finger was missing a top joint.

Dodd found that the close air in the crypt with its musty smell of the long dead and the gassy fecal stench reeking from the corpse was on the verge of embarassing him. He didn’t have a hanky, so he put his hand over his nose and swallowed hard.

Carey smiled at him. “Look here, Sergeant,” he said, “see? It’s interesting, isn’t it?” Carey was holding up the flaccid swollen fingers. By the guttering light of the candles Dodd could see they were scarred with burns in a couple of places, but also that there was a clerk’s callus on the middle finger of his right hand. Yet the palms had the calluses you got from using a spade, not a sword.

He frowned. Yes, it was interesting. What manner of man was it? A gentleman wouldn’t have spade calluses on his palms and a commoner wouldn’t have a clerk’s bump from holding a pen.

“Ay,” he said, “He wis wearing a ring too.” He pointed gingerly at the mark on the little finger left by a ring.

Carey carefully lifted the other hand. “No other rings, the same marks though.”

“And what happened to his feet?” said Hunsdon, watching his son with his head on one side and a look of baffled pride on his face.

Carey moved to that end, past a pair of knobbly knees, and blinked down at the exposed ankle joints. “It looks like they were torn off after the man was dead,” he said thoughtfully. “Hmm.” He bent closer to look and Dodd peered as well, brought one of the watchlights over.

The bone seemed to have been ground by something hard leaving little grains of red there. Perhaps flakes of rust?

“Hm,” said Carey again and went to the head end. “I wonder…”

To Dodd’s disgust, he took out his poinard and levered open the man’s mouth with it. A trickle of brown came out. Carey placed his gloved hand flat on the man’s chest and pressed. More brown water came out of the mouth.

“There’s no wound in the body, is there?”

“Stab wound in the back,” said Hunsdon, now holding a pomander to his nose, “probably to the kidneys.”

“Ah,” nodded Carey, taking refuge in his hanky again. Dodd was desperately trying not to cough. “I wonder if…”

At that moment the corpse shifted and farted, as if some horrible wall had been breached. All three of them were at the door in unspoken terror before the air filled with a stench so foul they were coughing and gagging as they ran up the stairs, leaving the watchcandles flickering blue behind them.

“Christ,” gasped Hunsdon as they tumbled out into the street with very little dignity, “I hate these cases. Bloody man will have to be embalmed until we can hold an inquest for him.” He gestured irritably at three of his men who were standing around holding a large tarpaulin and after an unhappy pause, they went down into the crypt to cover the corpse up again.

By unspoken agreement, all three of them went up the street and into a nearby Westminster boozing ken, a wooden hut but very nicely painted hard by the Court gate, with the traditional red lattices. Its battered patriotic sign bore the Tudor Rose, painted over a carving that looked as if it was of a boar or a pig of some kind. The barman knew Hunsdon immediately and was obsequious, bowing him into a private alcove away from the feverishly gaming young courtiers. Their brandies came from a different barrel under the counter and when Dodd gulped it, he wished he hadn’t for it was very much better than the aqua vitae he normally drank when pressed. At least, he thought gloomily, he had held his water and hadn’t vomited, though it had been a close thing when the corpse moved…To be sure it was no more than the gas in it and Dodd had seen it happen before, but in a small space and in the light of the candles…As Carey’s father had said, Christ!

His heartbeat was settling again. Two more of Hunsdon’s men, Turner and Catchpole, stood around nearby. Now Dodd had to suppress another moment of happy smugness. Normally it would be him standing by walls, watching his betters drinking, bored and waiting for an order from Lowther or Scrope, not sitting down and doing the drinking. He had done the same duty for his wife’s uncle, the Armstrong headman, Kinmont Willie Armstrong, although on those occasions he hadn’t been bored at all because he was waiting for the fight to begin. So this gentlemanning around London was a pleasant change and it worried him that he was getting used to it.

His face settled back into its normal glum scowl and he sipped more carefully at the aqua vitae so he could actually taste the stuff.

“Good isn’t it,” said Carey, whose face was not quite so pale now. “It’s a French aqua vitae, made from cider.”

“Ay?” Dodd was interested. “What’s normal brandy made of then?”

“Wine usually.”

“Is that the same as brandywine?”

“No, that’s wine mixed with brandy and usually some spices and sugar. Very good it is too…”

Carey caught the potboy’s eye, established that the boozing ken was high-class enough to have brandywine, and a few minutes later Dodd was sipping that as well. Carey hadn’t even asked the price-that was what having a rich father did to you, thought Dodd.

“I’ve already told the Board to convene tomorrow, damn and blast it,” said Hunsdon, knocking back his own aqua vitae. “God, I hate council meetings.”

“When exactly was he found?”

“Low tide, yesterday,” said Hunsdon. “Gave one of the Queen’s favourite chamberers a nasty turn.”

“So probably carried downriver by the current, not up by the tide.”

“Probably.”

“Hm.” Carey was looking thoughtfully into his wine.

“Any ideas, Robin?”