David Bishop - A murder in Marienburg

Belladonna Speer had always possessed a fascination for corpses. Not so much the corpses themselves, more for deducing why they had become corpses. What turned a living, breathing person into an empty, barren husk? Where did their spirit, their essence go once they were dead? And how had that spirit been driven from their body? Most of all, she enjoyed the puzzle of solving these riddles, even though she knew many of them were enigmas no mortal could hope to explain or understand. Belladonna had seen her first corpse at the tender age of seven, when she found her mother’s father dead outside the family home in Guilderveld. Other children would have been traumatised, horrified, emotionally scarred for life. Belladonna was simply intrigued: why had her grandfather died, and what had killed him? The Black Caps had glanced at the wrinkled, wizened corpse and immediately announced anyone who lived long enough to see their seventh decade must have died of old age.

A priest of Morr was called to deal with the body, prior to Ruben Speer taking his place at the family mausoleum in Doodkanaal. Belladonna had watched the priest from her window as he anointed the body with various unguents and potions. The bald-headed holy man noticed her interest and invited the girl to come down. “You do not fear me?” he had asked, a wry smile at the corner of his pale, grey eyes.

“Why should I?”

“Many associate us with their own, inevitable mortality. Few wish to be near us, yet you display no such fear. Are you accustomed to death, my child?”

Belladonna shook her head. “I’d never seen a body before today. But everybody dies, don’t they?”

“Yes.”

“So what is there to be afraid of?” She had smiled, satisfied by her childish logic. It was Belladonna who noticed the scent of almonds on her grandfather’s breath when the priest accidentally leaned on the dead man’s chest. When she pointed this out to him, he repeated the motion and was rewarded with another waft of almond-tinged air escaping the corpse’s nostrils.

“Poison,” the priest whispered to himself, more a statement of fact than a question. He paused in his ministrations to study the corpse’s pupils and gums. He lifted up the fingers of both hands and sniffed at them. But it was Belladonna who found the abandoned hipflask, a trickle of almond-scented alcohol still inside it. She was about to taste the liquid for herself until the priest slapped it from her grasp. “Don’t!” He retrieved the flask and again sniffed at it. “Definitely poison-possibly from Araby.” Another deep breath. “Is your grandfather a merchant?”

“Yes. He deals with Araby all the time,” Belladonna said. “But one of the other merchants, Clements, wants my grandfather to retire and sell the business to him.” When the priest raised an eyebrow at this information coming from a young girl, Belladonna smiled sweetly. “I heard my grandfather arguing with Clements outside my window last night. Their shouting woke me up. Clements said he couldn’t wait any longer for my grandfather to retire from the business, he would have to take drastic action.” She looked at the lifeless remnants of her grandfather. “I’d never heard those words before, that’s why they stuck in my head. Is this what drastic action looks like? Did Clements poison my grandfather?”

“Yes, my child-I’m afraid he may have done. But you must not speak of this to anyone, do you understand?” the priest asked. “If Clements knows we suspect him, he will flee the city-or worse.”

So began Belladonna’s fascination for corpses and how they had died. Clements had confessed when confronted by Black Caps and was taken to the prison on Rijker’s Isle, where he died in a brawl. Belladonna would have liked to see his body, to study the clues it offered-but girls didn’t do such things.

There were no words to describe her talent for seeing what others did not. It was more than mere instinct or intuition. She could look at a body and instantly know what had happened to it, where others only saw grief or pain. As the years passed, the priest of Morr let her observe his duties, learning from him the many ways of slaying a person. Belladonna’s interest lay more with the methods of murder than the corpses left behind. As a woman she could never become a priest of Morr, but she had little wish to spend a lifetime in drab clerical robes that frightened everyone else away. She loved life too much to lock herself away in a temple or a mausoleum for the rest of her days.

Of course, her fascination with killings and manslaughter did not go well with her family. Young women from wealthy merchant families were usually destined for a choice from three roles in life: wife, mother or mistress. Some managed to pursue all three activities with equal vigour, but most kept themselves to one or two of these choices.

Belladonna’s four sisters were not her equal in intelligence or guile, even if you combined their collective wits and wisdom, but they were the apples of their parents’ eyes. By comparison, she was a troublesome child, a worrisome young lady and, finally, a woman of uncommon beauty who refused to abide by social conventions. Not for her a lifetime of flower arranging and child rearing. Instead Belladonna had horrified the rest of the Speer family by joining the Black Caps on her twenty-first birthday. She hadn’t been home since, except for her father’s funeral the previous winter. In a city where women were expected to be wives or whores-and sometimes both-Belladonna Speer was busy creating a new destiny, reinventing herself afresh.

Well, that was the theory. In fact she had spent the past three years working as a messenger and private secretary for the commander. She was his eyes and ears on the streets of Marienburg, reporting back to him any and all observations made during her travels. Yes, it was intriguing to be sent into the worst hives of scum and villainy, knowing the commander’s armband guaranteed her safe passage.

Belladonna had seen things few other women ever witnessed, and that had satisfied her innate curiosity for a while. But now her patience was wearing thin. She had learned all she could from these occasional excursions on errands for the commander. Now she wanted to put her theories and observations into practice, out on the streets and canals of this magnificent city. The problem was convincing the commander to forgo her.

The chiming of the dawn gong shook Belladonna from her musings. She was already up and dressed, standing by the single window of her private room in City Watch headquarters. The chamber was no larger than a monastic cell and as sparsely furnished, a stack of leather-bound journals the only truly personal possession. Belladonna made a mental note to come back here and collect the journals after seeing the commander. They contained observations and notes gathered over more than a dozen years, the fruits of her labours to learn all she could about the many methods of administering murder.

In truth, the contents were as familiar to her as the city itself, but the journals were a comfort against doubt. If all went according to plan, those volumes would have a new home before the end of the day. She strode from the room, not bothering to look back. When you possessed a fascination for corpses and how they came to be dead, the luxuries of the living held little interest anymore. Kurt was waiting outside the Watch Commander’s antechamber when the dawn gong sounded. The sound boomed along the long, empty corridor, sustained by the high, vaulted ceiling and walls of stone. The headquarters of the City Watch was a grand, spacious building in stark contrast to the places where lowly watchmen worked. Most stations were humble buildings in obscure corners of the city, often sited in converted homes or warehouses that had been seized from lawbreakers as part of their punishment.