The Medieval Murderers - The Tainted Relic

‘He said it was cursed,’ I said.

‘Who said it was cursed? What was cursed?’

‘What are you talking about, Nick?’

There was exasperation as well as alarm in my friends’ voices.

‘It’ll take too long to tell now,’ I said.

‘Then tell it to the Justice,’ said Jack. ‘Let’s get out of here, for Christ’s sake.’

But it was too late. We should have quit the tent the moment that we’d seen what it contained. All at once the crowded space-three living players in the company of one dead publisher and bookseller-was filled with two more figures. Big fellows they were, the ones with beetling brows. Justice Farnaby’s constables. We’d seen the easy way they dealt with large Ursula the pig woman and the equally large Wapping Doll. Three slender players were no match for them.

They indicated in their rough-and-ready fashion that they’d been alerted by reports of a pistol shot. Now we were to accompany them to Justice Farnaby. Obviously, we stammered out our innocence and ignorance. But equally obviously we had questions to answer. Jack and Abel and I were left with no choice but to go quietly to the Pie-Powder Court. We exited the tent, leaving the body on the ground. The constables hadn’t quite placed us under arrest. Yet, if we had tried to flee, not only would it have suggested guilt but we would most certainly have been brought down by their long staffs of office.

The only crumb of comfort in all this was that the makeshift court was situated in part of what had once been St Bartholomew’s Priory-a tent or stall obviously being an undignified place for the administration of justice-and that the old monastic buildings lay in this quarter of the fair. As I’ve already mentioned, it was a comparatively quiet spot, and so we didn’t attract too many gawpers while we were being escorted there. We tried to put on an air of innocence, as though we were simply out for a stroll with this pair of hulking figures. But then innocence is the air assumed by every guilty man, isn’t it?

The grounds and buildings of Bartholomew Fair are owned by the Rich family (never was a family better named) and, at some time in the past, one of them had caused parts of the priory to be restored, not for pious reasons but so that he could swell his coffers by leasing them out. So we found ourselves shoved into a room that might once have been a monk’s cell and was now used for holding malefactors caught at the fair. The constables searched us in a rudimentary fashion. We had nothing of interest about our persons. The pile of paper that I’d retrieved from under Hatch’s body and tucked into my shirt, the foul papers of Shakespeare’s Domitian , were riffled through. I doubted that either man could read, and even if he could, what was there to see? A load of paper which its creator considered worthless and wished to see destroyed.

It crossed my mind to attempt to bribe our gaolers with the money that WS had given me, and indeed they were reluctant to hand back the coins once they’d tipped them out of my purse. But the very fact that they did return them indicated that they were principled. Either that or they were more fearful of Justice Farnaby than they were eager to be corrupted into letting us go. Our search over, they turned the key in the door. There was nowhere to sit in the cell. A small barred window let in a few dusty strings of light and the distant sounds of people enjoying themselves.

Jack Wilson and Abel Glaze looked at me. They didn’t have to say a word. This was my fault, wasn’t it? What had I got them into? Nevertheless we were innocent. Cling to that fact. Rely on English justice and fair play. A few words with Justice Farnaby should be enough to clear up the confusion. Or so I thought.

‘Nick,’ said Abel, ‘have you told us everything?’

‘Yes. No. Not exactly,’ I said.

‘Maybe you had better tell us everything,’ said Jack, ‘before we find ourselves going to Heaven in a string.’

Jack’s reference to a Tyburn execution was casual enough, but it made me feel cold in spite of the stuffy cell.

‘There’s not much to say,’ I said. ‘But Ulysses Hatch wasn’t only in the business of selling Shakespeare’s foul papers…’

And so I explained how the bookseller had mistakenly assumed I’d come in quest of the relic, how he’d shown it to me and how-when it was evident that I knew nothing of it-he had hastily hidden it away again in the chest, with instructions to keep mum. The revelation about the relic took them aback, but I could see that they believed me. If I was going to invent a story it wouldn’t have been as far fetched as this one.

‘That’s what you were looking in the trunk for?’ said Abel. ‘A fragment of the True Cross? Can it really be so?’

‘Real or sham, the item has gone.’

‘Taken by whoever murdered Hatch?’ said Jack.

‘It looks like it.’

‘Then it’s easy,’ said Abel. ‘We find the person who’s in possession of this so-called fragment and get him arrested.’

‘And how are we going to find this individual when we’re locked up in here?’ said Jack. ‘Besides, if he’s any sense he’ll be miles away by now.’

‘It may be that we’re looking for a dead man,’ I said. ‘Ulysses Hatch told me that to touch the relic was death. It seems to have worked in his case.’

Like the remark about the Tyburn string, this added to the general discomfort of the cell.

‘Tom Gally is at the fair,’ said Jack. ‘From what you said, Nick, he was after something.’

‘It might have been the foul papers or the piece of the cross-but perhaps he wasn’t after anything particular. Gally’s the kind of person who sniffs around by instinct. Like a dog. Though it may be that he…’

‘What?’

‘He noticed me leaving Hatch’s tent. Perhaps he’d already arranged to buy the relic-or the foul papers-and got worried when he saw me. Thought I was trying to get my hands on them and stepped in to prevent it.’

‘But why should he kill Hatch?’ said Jack. ‘He’d simply offer him more money than you did. Henslowe’s got deep pockets.’

This was true enough and I could think of no reply. After a time, Abel said,

‘There were those two women about to fight over Hatch, weren’t there? The pig woman and what’s her name…?’

‘Wapping Doll.’

‘Either of them looks as though she’d be capable of felling a man with her bare hands. Where did Wapping Doll go after the Justice broke up the fight? Back to the tent to confront Master Hatch?’

Abel was so excited by this possibility that he couldn’t resist throwing us another suspect. ‘And don’t forget we saw Nightingale’s accomplice-that nip called Peter Perkin-coming out of Hatch’s tent just as we got there.’

‘Hatch was alive then,’ I said. ‘And afterwards.’

‘Perkin could have gone back later.’

‘Someone went back later.’

‘You said that there was bad feeling between William Shakespeare and Ulysses Hatch?’ said Abel.

‘Yes. It’s one reason why he wasn’t willing to deal with the bookseller himself,’ I confirmed. ‘And before you go any further, Abel, I don’t think WS slipped into Hatch’s tent and killed him with his own pistol. Have you seen him around this fair? I haven’t.’

‘Master Shakespeare is good at passing unnoticed,’ said Jack.

It was true that WS had the knack of slipping into places and out again without drawing attention to himself, but for some reason the comment irritated me.

‘Don’t forget he’s killed many-in his imagination,’ said Abel.

This irritated me even more and I said, ‘Well, so have I killed many, and so has everyone, apart from the purest nun.’