S. Parris - Execution

‘The kings of Europe will need some convincing. Are you hoping for a letter in Mary’s hand ordering the death of Elizabeth? She is too canny to trap herself like that, surely?’

His mouth grew pinched. ‘Ideally, I had hoped for a letter from Babington spelling out the exact means by which it was to be done, and naming his co-conspirators, and a reply from Mary giving her explicit assent. She is desperate, and growing incautious – I think, if things had continued to unfold as they were, we might have brought her to it. But Clara’s death has thrown all that into confusion. The one letter we have from Mary to Babington hints at her approval of the plan, but in abstract terms only.’ He steepled his fingers together. ‘I am not happy about our chances of convicting her on that alone.’

‘It could be made more convincing,’ Phelippes said, impassive. Walsingham did not reply.

That hardly sounded like due process to me, but I had no chance to comment, as the carriage pulled to an abrupt halt. Phelippes slammed open the door and jumped down. Walsingham gestured for me to follow and I climbed out, peering through the darkness to discover that we were among fields, a few low dwellings and hedgerows standing out along the horizon. It must have been near midnight; overhead a milky moon shone through scraps of cloud, and ahead I could make out the shape of a small building with a pointed roof. The remote bleating of sheep and the drawn-out hoot of a hunting owl carried through the dark. Phelippes had taken a torch from the coachman and knocked on the door.

‘One of the old leper chapels,’ Walsingham remarked, beside me. His breath steamed in the night air and he stamped his feet against the cold. ‘Still has its uses.’

The door scraped open a crack, enough for a stocky figure in clerical robes to appear and demand our business. Phelippes held up his light and when the man realised who his visitors were, he bowed low and held the door wide for us.

‘Any trouble?’ Walsingham asked, moving briskly past him into the shadows of the chapel. Inside, a couple of tallow candles were burning low, and I saw a bed had been made up in a far corner. The air smelled of animal fat, with a reek of piss pots and something worse hovering beneath.

‘No one has been near the place,’ the man said, leading us to his straw pallet, which he pulled aside to reveal a hatch set into the floor. ‘Save a couple of vagrants looking for shelter. I gave them bread and threatened them with the constable if they returned. Otherwise quiet.’ He drew a key from his belt and unlocked an iron padlock that secured the opening, pulled back a bolt and lifted the hatch to reveal a set of steps. Cold air and the unmistakable stench of stale blood and dead flesh rose through the gap. I recoiled, stepping backwards into Walsingham.

‘Steady, Bruno.’ I felt his hand rest on my shoulder a moment longer than necessary, as if to impart courage. ‘Let Thomas go first with the light.’ He turned to the curate, or watchman, or whatever he was. ‘Fetch me a lantern and keep your eyes on the door.’

I took a deep breath and followed Phelippes into what must have once been a crude crypt beneath the chapel. The smell of death intensified and as my eyes adjusted, I saw a table had been constructed on two trestles, with a shape draped in a sheet lying on top. Phelippes approached it, his face contorted against the stink, twisting his features into a grotesque mask in the flickering light as he pulled the cloth back. It snagged in places where the body’s excretions had caused it to stick to the skin. I fought down bile and pressed my sleeve to my face as I willed myself to look at the sight he had uncovered.

Her face – what remained of it – was hideous; a gaping hole where one eye and the nose had been, now collapsed in on itself as the flesh around it had begun to blacken. The head had been crudely shaved and the ears sliced off. The girl was clothed, though her feet and arms were bare, the skin mottled; the bodice of her gown was stiff with dark stains. Her remaining eye, wide and bulging, seemed to stare upwards at horrors she would never divulge.

‘ Dio porco ,’ I breathed, through my sleeve.

‘I know.’ I felt Walsingham’s shoulder touch mine as he held up the lantern. ‘Thoughts?’

I shook my head; my only thought at present was to escape to the cool night outside, breathe deeply, run a mile from this obscenity and everything he was asking of me. Even a boat back to France and the wilful stupidity of my students seemed preferable to what he was proposing, now that the girl’s body was in front of me. Instead, I fought down my nausea and approached the table, steeling myself to examine her with a physician’s impartiality. It was hardly the first time I had been in the presence of violent death; somehow I never grew inured to it. I would have made a hopeless soldier, as my father had been fond of telling me.

‘She was found in a churchyard, you said?’

‘A graveyard,’ Walsingham corrected. ‘The Cross Bones, in Southwark. No church involved – it’s a scrap of wasteland, given over by the Bishop of Winchester for the burial of those who can’t be put in consecrated ground. Suicides, unbaptised infants, but mostly the criminals and prostitutes who turn up dead in the borough. Saves too many questions about what happened to them.’

‘The ward of Southwark is outside the legal jurisdiction of the City of London and instead falls under the governance of the Bishop of Winchester, which makes it effectively lawless,’ Phelippes put in, helpfully. ‘This is why it is full of bear pits, brothels and gaming houses – the Bishop turns a blind eye and the city authorities cannot intervene.’

‘I know. I am familiar with Southwark,’ I said, giving him a look which was lost in the dark. I turned back to Walsingham. ‘Do you suppose her killers meant to bury her there, to keep her from being found?’

‘I would say that was likely not their intention. She was discovered at first light by the night watchman – old fellow, getting on for seventy. If they had wanted to hide the body, there were easier ways to do it.’

‘Then she was supposed to be seen,’ I mused. ‘And in a whores’ graveyard. The face, too, and the hair – that would fit. A deliberate display, rather than merely cruel torture.’

‘What do you mean?’ He moved closer beside me, raising his light to illuminate that grisly mutilation. I fixed my eyes on Clara’s hand, cold and white at her side, slim fingers curling gently inwards. I noticed that her nails were neatly filed and well cared for; she was evidently a woman who had taken pride in the details of her appearance. That should not have affected the degree of horror I felt at what had been done to her, but somehow it seemed to make it worse. I swallowed.

‘In some ancient societies – Byzantium, for example – a woman who committed adultery was punished by having her head shaved and her nose and ears cut off.’ I spoke slowly, forming the thoughts even as I voiced them. ‘Though she was intended to survive the disfiguring. It was a way of marking her betrayal for life, and ensuring no other man would touch her.’

Walsingham clapped me on the shoulder. ‘You see, Thomas – this is why we have need of Bruno’s mind. I had supposed they meant to obscure her identity, so she could not be easily recognised, but I confess that made little sense, given that they left her clothes. I had not thought it might be symbolic.’

He fell silent and I knew his thoughts had flown back, as mine had, to the last time he and I had stood over the body of a girl whose killer had left symbols carved into her flesh.

‘Perhaps I am reading too much,’ I said quickly. ‘I only wondered if someone was making a point about betrayal. How was she identified?’