The Medieval Murderers - Hill of Bones

‘Let it be now then,’ I said.

Had I stopped to think the matter through, I would have refused her request. A great deal of trouble would have been avoided. Some danger too. But I was persuaded to do this merciful deed by her manner, by her pleading – by her attractions too, of course. If I hoped anything at all it was that the old uncle might be so deep asleep or far gone that no pretence on my part would be necessary. As I followed Katherine Hawkins down the narrow road, which I later learned was called Vicarage Lane, I reflected that this errand was very different from what I’d been imagining when I was handed the ‘privy message’.

We halted outside a doorway over which hung a lantern. As far as I was able to see, the houses in the lane were newer than some others in the city, rising to three or four storeys rather than two, and constructed of stone instead of timber. I remembered that Katherine said her uncle was a cloth merchant, a well-to-do one. She produced a key and unlocked the door. Inside the lobby, which was illuminated by a couple of wax candles, a woman of uncertain age started up from a chair. She’d been dozing.

‘Why, Mistress Katherine, where have you been?’

‘It’s all right, Hannah. It’s a close night. I needed a little air.’

The woman, who was wearing a grey overdress, looked curiously at me. I would have done the same in her position. I waited for whatever explanation Katherine Hawkins would give. I wasn’t going to help her out. She hung the door key on a hook by the entrance and then removed her hat, doing each action slowly as if to give herself time to think. I saw that, although strained, she had an enticing face, a wide mobile mouth, a delicate chin, large eyes.

‘Oh, here is an extraordinary coincidence, Hannah. This is Mr Revill. He is a member of the King’s Men who have been playing in the yard of the Bear. He and the others have come all the way from London. Mr Revill knew William.’

‘William?’ said the woman, who I supposed was some long-time retainer. She struggled to catch up with Katherine Hawkins, who now said with deliberate slowness: ‘Yes, our cousin William. Mr Revill knew him in London.’

The older woman’s face lit up even as I felt myself growing more and more uncomfortable with the deception.

‘You are friends with William, sir! How is he? Where is he?’

I shrugged, to hide my unease, and said, ‘I’ve no idea where your William is. I met him only once – or perhaps it was twice – many years ago. I… I was told he had gone to the Americas.’

‘I thought it might be a comfort for Uncle Christopher to see Mr Revill,’ said Katherine smoothly. She was very adept at spinning a tale. I wondered what else she had said that was half true or outright false.

‘Of course, of course,’ said Hannah.

‘I will take him up to my uncle. Go to bed now, Hannah.’

Hastily, to avoid further comment or question, she snatched up one of the wax candles and we left the lobby. I followed her up the stairs.

Half-way up, when we were out of earshot of the woman, I stopped and whispered urgently to her, ‘Already you have involved me in a complete falsehood and I have not even seen your uncle. Whatever you may say to the woman in the lobby, I’ve never met your cousin.’

‘You could have encountered him in London,’ she whispered back. ‘I told you Cousin William wanted to be a player. And I had to explain your presence to Hannah somehow.’

She was very close to me and standing on the stair above so we were at the same height. She bent forward a degree and kissed me on the lips, holding the candle delicately poised to one side. I felt her breasts against me. She stayed for just long enough before pulling back and saying, ‘I beg you to do this one thing that we have already discussed, Mr Revill. I shall ask no more of you, while you… you may ask of me what you please.’

She turned down a passage at the top of the first flight of stairs, without looking back to see whether I was behind her. She came to a door, tapped on it once, softly, and almost straight away twisted the handle and entered the chamber. I halted in the entrance, peering through the gloom, wondering what I had been foolish enough to let myself in for and wishing with (almost) all my heart that I was back with my fellows at Mother Treadwell’s.

What followed was painful but not entirely painful. I’ll tell it in brief. The room belonging to the dying uncle Christopher – at least that part was true, he really was very near death – was stiflingly hot, not only on account of the general airlessness of the night but because a fire smouldered in the chimneypiece while a half-dozen candles consumed themselves in different corners. There were grand tapestries on the wall, depicting knights in the lists or knights out hunting or knights conversing with ladies in pointed hats.

Katherine went forward to a large four-poster bed, its curtains drawn back. A sharp-nosed man was lying there. His head was almost sunk into a pile of pillows, his body buried under thick blankets, his reed-thin arms stretched out flat on the covers. Resting under his right hand was a small black-bound book. Perhaps nothing confirmed how close he was to dying as the presence of the Bible.

When Katherine beckoned me forward to stand beside her, I could scarcely make out anything but the nose, the glimmer of white in the almost closed eyes, the threads of hair sticking out from under his nightcap.

She shook her uncle gently by the shoulder to ensure that he was awake or at least not completely asleep. She said several times, ‘William is here. Your Will is here, Uncle.’ And to vary it, ‘He has returned, your son has returned.’

Eventually his right hand fluttered and a kind of twitch affected the dying man’s lips. His head moved towards me a fraction and I sat on the edge of the bed, took his dry, cold hand in mine and said, ‘Yes, I am here.’ I could not bring myself to say the name of William. I said, ‘I am here,’ again, but more loudly, and his fingers tightened slightly on my wrist while his mouth seemed to widen into a smile or a grimace.

He struggled to say something even as his feeble grip slackened and his fingers scrabbled at the cover of the Bible. He was making a vain attempt to pick it up. I had to lean very close to hear him but, striving with every word, he was saying, ‘Take – it – take – it – William.’

At first I was not sure what he meant, then understood he must be referring to the black-bound testament. I looked towards Katherine, standing beside and above me. She gestured, yes, yes, take it, so I took up the Bible from the dying man’s hand and, without thinking, slipped it into a pocket in my doublet. While all this was going on, the old uncle appeared almost animated. Then the expression vanished altogether and his head subsided even further into the white pillows. I had the image of a man drowning in foam. And I do not know whether that man was Uncle Christopher or me, for I had never felt more uneasy or uncertain in my life.

The less painful part came afterwards. Indeed, there was some pleasure in it. After a few more minutes by the bedside of Uncle Christopher – who might now have been truly dead apart from the odd tremor in his chest and a sound from his gaping mouth like fallen leaves being blown along – Katherine took me by the hand and ushered me from the room. There was another staircase leading to the next floor where two or three rooms were clustered together under the roof. Guided by the single candle she held in her other hand, up we crept and she opened the door to a low-ceilinged chamber, equipped with a simple bedstead and a chest.

Without saying anything, Katherine gestured towards the window. I went to look. The window was still half open. I leaned out. Down below was the yard of the Bear Inn and the stage where the King’s Men had presented our production of A House Divided . To one side was a portion of the garden that must belong to the house, separated from the inn yard by a stone wall. In the moonlight I could see the whole scene quite clearly. There was no one left in the yard now, no murmuring idlers, no pipe embers.