Paul Doherty - The Midnight Man

‘Lord, save us,’ Anselm whispered. ‘So our good parson, like us all, is moved by the lusts of the flesh. Quick, Stephen, collect our baggage and away we go.’

Thankfully Parson Smollat was in the sacristy and didn’t see Stephen enter the church. He collected the panniers he had left in the Galilee porch and hurried to join Anselm, who was standing under the cavernous lychgate.

‘Should we not bid farewell to Sir William or Sir Miles?’

‘We’ll return soon enough,’ Anselm replied. ‘While Sir Miles, believe me, will seek us out.’

They left the precincts of the church, going past All Hallows and into the trading area of Eastcheap. Stephen, lost in his own thoughts, felt his sleeve being plucked. He turned, stared at the young woman brazenly walking beside him and was immediately struck by her: soft and feminine, yet a truly determined young woman. Her skin had a golden, healthy hue; her thick, auburn hair, bound in two plaits, was almost covered by a blue veil. This trailed from a small cap on top of her head, then wrapped around her soft throat like a wimple. She wore a woollen fur coat decorated with silver leaves over a dark clean kirtle, with stout leather shoes on her feet. One of these was loose so she gripped Stephen’s arm to steady herself as she put this right.

‘Mistress?’

Anselm, a little further ahead, turned and came back.

‘Mistress?’ Stephen flustered, staring into the young woman’s beautiful grey eyes. ‘What business do you have with me?’

‘None, Brother.’ She smiled cheekily. ‘I am sorry. I’m Alice Palmer. My father owns the tavern The Unicorn on the corner of Eel-Pie Lane close to Saint Michael’s church.’

‘I know it,’ Anselm replied above the noise of the crowd around him. ‘What is that to us?’

‘A scullion, one of our maids, Margotta Sumerhull, has been missing for weeks. Sometimes she’d go to pray before the Lady altar at Saint Michael’s. I’ve asked Parson Smollat.’ She smiled, moving a wisp of hair from her face. ‘My father has also petitioned Sir William but neither can help. Margotta could be wild. Anyway,’ she shrugged, ‘we’ve heard of you, about the strange happenings at Saint Michael’s, as well as the presence of a King’s man — Sir Miles Beauchamp. We know him. He lives nearby. Sometimes he visits our tavern. Perhaps you would be kind enough to support our petition?’

‘We shall do what we can.’ Stephen stood fascinated by that beautiful smile. The young woman grabbed his arm, kissed him full on the lips and fled into the crowd. Stephen’s fingers slowly went to his mouth. Anselm, smiling, shook him gently.

‘A woman’s kiss,’ the exorcist murmured, ‘one of God’s great gifts. Count yourself lucky, Stephen, and let’s move on.’ They hastened through the crowds. ‘The world and its retinue,’ Anselm murmured, ‘have gathered to buy and sell.’ Stephen kept close to his master. The busy, frenetic atmosphere of the city, hungry for trade, was overwhelming. Carts and sumpter ponies laden with Italian spices, Gascon wine, Spanish leather, Hainault linen and lace as well as timber, iron and rope from the frozen northern kingdoms, forced their way through. The clatter of all these competed with the constant din of chickens, pigs, cows, oxen and geese loaded on, or pulling, heavy wheeled carts and tumbrils. The air was riven by the crack of the whip, the neighing of horses and constant yapping of alleyway dogs. From the cramped alleyways and runnels leading on to the broad thoroughfares of Poultry and Cheapside swarmed London’s other city: the hidden world of the wandering musicians, rogues, cozeners, naps and foists, charlatans and coney catchers, all bedecked in their motley, garish rags and eager for prey. A sweaty tribe, which reeked of every foul odour, these swarmed around the hundreds of market stalls, pitting their wits against the bailiffs and beadles who constantly patrolled the markets. The officials had already caught one miscreant, a toper, his nose as brilliantly red as a full-blown rose; arrested for foisting, he was being led off to stand in the cage on the top of the tun which housed the conduit for Cheapside.

The crowd surged, broke and met again. Apprentice boys hopped like frogs, shouting for custom. Fur-gowned burgesses, arm-in-arm with their richly dressed spouses, rubbed shoulders with fish-wives hurling obscenities at each other over a cohort of men-at-arms marching down to the Tower. A market beadle proclaimed the names of two whores missing from their brothel. A juggler leading a mule decorated with cymbals stopped to ask two Franciscans in their earth-coloured, rope-girdled robes for their blessing, only to be screamed at by a group of fops, in their elegant cloaks and soft Spanish leather boots, for blocking the way. Underfoot the thoroughfare was littered with all forms of dirt and refuse. Gong-carts were attempting to clear the mess but were unable to get through. The street air, fragranced by freshly-baked bread and platters of spiced meats, turned slightly rancid as the stench curled in from the workshops of the tanners, fullers and smithies.

The two Carmelites entered the Shambles. Butchers and their boys, bloodied from head to toe, were busy slaughtering cattle. In a flutter of plumage birds of every kind: quail, pheasant, chicken and duck had their necks wrung, their throats slashed, before being tossed to the sitting women to be plucked and doused in scalding, salted water before being hooked above the stalls. The cobbles glittered in the bloody juices from all this carnage. Dogs, cats and kites fought for globules of flesh, fat and entrails. The air reeked of blood, iron and dung. Anselm hurried past on to the great concourse before the forbidding mass of Newgate prison, its crenellated towers soaring either side of the grim, iron-studded gates. An execution party was assembling. The death cart rolled out, crammed with manacled prisoners bound for the Elms at Smithfield or the Forks by Tyburn stream. Immediately the waiting crowd surged forward as friends and relatives fought to make a sombre farewell. Some prisoners screamed their messages; a few were so drunk they lay unconscious against the sides of the cart. Mounted archers beat back the mob with whips and sticks while the sheriffs, resplendent in their ermine-lined red robes, shouted for order. Anselm and Stephen waited until the execution party moved off, then pushed their way through a crowd thronging around a Dominican garbed in the distinctive black and white of that order.

‘Beware,’ the trumpet-voiced preacher declared, ‘beware, you adulterers! In hell you shall be bound to stakes in a fiery pool; each will have to face his mistress similarly bound. And that is not all, oh no! Demons will lash your private parts with wire. You traders who cheated the poor, your fate will be sealed in a red-hot leaden casket in Satan’s own black castle. You gluttons who stuffed your gaping mouths. .’

‘I don’t think this concerns us,’ Anselm murmured. ‘Never mind gluttony! I’m starving.’

They passed through the old city walls, turning left into the maze of alleys leading down to Fleet Street and the House of the Carmelites, the White Friars. Stephen tried to hide his nervousness. These runnels were a labyrinth of iniquity. Here lurked the sanctuary men, the wolfsheads, the utlegati and the proscribed wanted by this sheriff or that. Here the knife, the garrotte or the club were drawn at the drop of a dice or the turn of a counter. Narrow, evil-smelling lanes, the walls on either side coated with a messy slime, the ground under foot squelched with the dirt and refuse thrown out by those who lived in the rat castles on either side. Now and again a candle glowed against the perpetual darkness. A flambeau burnt under a crucifix which did not hold the figure of Christ but Dismas the Good Thief. Shadow people, nighthawks and darksmen flittered through the murk. Anselm and Stephen were watched then dismissed.