The Medieval Murderers - King Arthur's Bones

Before any of this, we gave a selective account of what had happened to William Shakespeare, Edmund and I. We included the bear. We could hardly have left the bear out, for the fatal attack on an innocent bookseller was briefly the talk of London. We also mentioned some of the other mischief but not the whole story. WS probably guessed there was more to it, but he didn’t press us. He did not even ask how Edmund had acquired the great bump on his forehead. We were sitting in his Silver Street lodgings, drinking, chatting. I was curious about WS’s plan to write a play on the matter of Britain and King Arthur. I recalled that both the bone and some pages of his manuscript had gone missing. Stolen? It seemed not.

‘My landlady took the bone. She thought it was an unhealthy thing to have in her house, and perhaps she was right. I am sorry, Edmund, since you presented it to me, but I fear it has ended up in some midden.’

WS did not seem unduly concerned by the fate of the relic, while Edmund too was unbothered. He seemed more pleased to be in WS’s good books.

‘And the sheets of manuscript?’ I persisted.

‘Nothing sinister, Nick. They must have blown out of the window. I found a few in the garden below. The ink had run and the snails had left silver tracks across them. I think I shall take it as a sign.’

‘A sign?’

‘That I should not pursue the subject of King Arthur. It is a doomed idea, or at least it is not one for me.’

‘I have an idea for a play, William,’ said Edmund. ‘Or for an incident in a play. It would be exciting. A man chased by a bear.’

WS gazed at his brother in disbelief. ‘Chased by a bear? And caught? And eaten? Like that unfortunate bookseller on the Thames.’

‘He wasn’t eaten,’ I said.

‘Good,’ said WS. ‘As I get older I find I am less inclined to put violence and horror on stage. Leave that to the rising generation.’

‘You could have the bear chase the man offstage,’ said Edmund. ‘Then you wouldn’t have to witness anything unpleasant. Sounds only. Cries. Crunching.’

‘Exit pursued by a bear?’

‘Why not?’

‘I’ll think on it,’ said WS.

‘Yeeugh!’

The screech woke Joe Malinferno from his disturbed slumbers. He had been dreaming of a horde of Egyptian mummies rising from their stony sarcophagi and pursuing him down the dingy London streets near where he lodged. Just as the greyish bindings unravelled from the skull of the leading mummy, revealing its gaping, dusty jaw, the scream reverberated in his brain. He sat up abruptly, his tangled shirt sticking uncomfortably to his sweaty torso.

‘Wh… aaat?’

His vocal cords were numbed, and he could hardly articulate his own cry of fear. He forced his eyes wide open, half-afraid that his nightmare might manifest itself in the grubby reality of his bedroom. Instead all he could discern in the darkness was a pair of pale, skinny buttocks poking towards him from across the room. He paused to admire them for a few minutes. The girl to whom the buttocks belonged then turned her pallid face towards him.

‘Here. There’s bones in this bag.’

‘Come back to bed… Kitten.’ He recalled her name just at the last minute, though its ridiculousness stuck on his tongue. Picking up a bawd in a gin-shop in Tooley Street was not his normal practice, and it wasn’t conducive to remembering the girl’s name later. Still, she had displayed a pleasing aspect last night, and he was drunk and in need of a romp. But by the cold light of day and in a more sober, if hung-over, mood Malinferno found her attractions less certain. However, the bed was still warm, and so were his passions. He beckoned her over to him, lifting the sheets enticingly.

‘They are just some old bones that Augustus Bromhead left me for safekeeping. They are of no consequence.’

The girl pouted, her pinched face puckering ever narrower until she began to resemble a rat. Malinferno was familiar with the appearance of such rodents. Creechurch Lane was on a convenient axis between Billingsgate Fish Market and Spitalfields, and rats infested the neighbourhood around his lodgings. One morning he had awoken to come face to face with a bold example of Rattus norvegicus sitting on his chest. He had screamed, and the rat had scurried off back behind the wood panelling that clad the bottom half of Malinferno’s bedroom. Kitten now looked less like the creature she was named after and more like a feline’s best enemy. She was bereft only of a rat’s whiskers. Though now that he looked closer, he could discern a fair sprinkling of hair on her upper lip too. He shuddered and let the sheets drop. Suddenly he was no longer in the mood to continue his amorous adventures. At least not with the pinch-faced Kit, who was now picking up one of the bones. A thigh-bone by its length and thickness, Malinferno reckoned. She waved it in the air.

‘Ooooh! Is it from one of them E-gyptian mummies?’

Malinferno smiled condescendingly. The fashion for all things Egyptian had been occasioned by England’s old enemy, Napoleon Bonaparte, and his invasion of that far-off land twenty years ago or more. Now, in 1818, it appeared that even a low bawd was influenced by the obsessions of the fashionable London set.

‘No. These are a mere hundred and fifty years old. Augustus Bromhead is an antiquarian, not an Egyptologist.’

He could see by Kit’s puzzled look that he had lost her already, and sighed. No use explaining to the girl the fine difference between his own interest in all things ancient and Egyptian, and Bromhead’s immersion in the more mundane and recent history of England. Neither man had much time for the other’s obsession, though both were eager to display their own knowledge to each other. It was only the previous day that Bromhead had thrust at Malinferno the bones that Kit was now playing with.

‘Tell me how old you think these bones are, young Giuseppe.’

The elderly man always used the proper version of Malinferno’s first name. Sometimes Joe thought it was done just to annoy him. Giuseppe was indeed the name with which he had been christened in his father’s native town of Padua. But he had been brought to England as a baby by his mother after the unfortunate demise of his father in circumstances his mother never explained. And as he grew up he easily adopted the familiar name of Joe, though his surname remained exotically Italianate. But Bromhead was strictly observant of formalities, so Giuseppe he was to the rotund, little dwarf of a man. The antiquarian had been perched as always on a high stool in his study amid a perfect blizzard of old texts, ancient stones and maps. Without getting down from his seat, he pushed a large canvas sack across the table towards Malinferno. Joe wondered if this was some sort of test of his scientific abilities. He hesitated a moment.

‘Go on. They won’t bite.’

Bromhead waved his strangely delicate hands at the sack and winked grotesquely. As if by way of explanation of his excitement, he described their origins.

‘I had them dug up myself. Witnessed the exhumation, indeed. At the Church of St Materiana in Trevenna in Cornwall.’

A wink once again contorted his wrinkled features, but it still left Malinferno in the dark concerning Bromhead’s interest in the contents of the sack.

‘How old are they, Augustus?’

Bromhead gave out a cackling laugh.

‘That is what I want you to tell me. You are always dabbling in the unrolling fad. You must know truly ancient bones when you see them.’

The antiquarian was referring to a new trend among society figures for holding a soirée at which an Egyptian mummy was the central guest. But the embalmed body was not there to be treated with respect and honour. A grotesque delectation in unravelling the burial bindings and revealing the skeleton within had gripped the smart set. And it was not scientific curiosity but rather a morbid delight in causing feigned horror that was the purpose. Some ladies affected to swoon quite away when the skull was revealed. Much to Bromhead’s annoyance, Malinferno had already taken part in two such unrollings. Joe, however, saw it as the only opportunity he would have to examine genuine mummies outside of the British Museum. So what if he had to play up to the upper-class set who frequented such events? He was already becoming known as ‘Il Professore’, and he quite liked the notoriety. Nor was he above purloining some of the jewels and other items that were sometimes bound within the funerary cerements. He waved aside Bromhead’s scornful remark.