S. Parris - Execution

‘Not what you’d choose for your last resting place, is it?’ He kept his voice determinedly light, though the tightness in his jaw betrayed the emotion he was fighting. ‘A pit of sluts, criminals and suicides. Never thought to see her end up somewhere like this.’ He turned to me. ‘She loved beautiful things, my sister.’

I thought of Clara’s pretty clothes, her careful manicure, that face.

‘At least she won’t be buried here,’ I said, aware it was meagre comfort.

‘She won’t be buried at all till Walsingham gives his say so. She’ll be left to rot till then, and I’m not even told where.’ He clamped his teeth together until he had composed himself. ‘The old watchman swears no one came past him through the gate all night. So they must have come over the wall. There, where the trees are – that’s the only place.’

‘You questioned the man yourself?’

‘No, though I’d have liked to. Walsingham told me. The old boy claims he heard nothing, saw nothing, till he found her under the tree at daybreak. But he’s not necessarily a reliable witness. He’s thought to have a history of turning a blind eye.’

‘To what?’

‘All sorts. It’s said bodies go missing from the Cross Bones. There’s the hospital of St Thomas just upriver – plenty there would pay to get their hands on a fresh corpse. I suppose they think no one would miss a dead whore.’ He gestured to the graveyard. ‘Not as if anyone comes to lay flowers here.’

‘This old watchman digs up the bodies to sell?’

‘Takes a coin to look away while others do it, more likely. If he says he heard nothing, that might be no more than he always says.’

‘He didn’t sell Clara’s body.’

‘He’s not a fool. He’d have seen from her clothes she was no Winchester goose – he probably guessed someone would come looking for her. Don’t suppose that stopped him pocketing what he could first. Come on.’

He set off across the plot towards the far wall. I let the horse loose to graze on the long grass and followed, skirting clumps of nettles and the treacherous dips between graves. Ahead of me, Poole stopped and kicked at a patch of ground beneath the apple tree, scuffing up the earth with the toe of his boot.

‘Look at this,’ he called, gesturing with his foot. I hurried after him, gripped by a sudden horror that he might have stumbled on the girl’s severed ear, tossed aside by the killer. But as I approached I saw what he had found; it was clear no rain had fallen in the past two days, and a wide rust-brown stain spread out between spikes of grass a few feet from the tree. When he lifted his head to look at me, I saw the effort it was costing him to maintain the appearance of detachment.

‘Blood, no?’

I nodded. He bunched one hand slowly into a fist and wrapped it in the palm of the other.

‘They told me she’d been strangled. I thought – well, at least that’s quick, she wouldn’t have suffered too long. So where’s this much blood come from?’

‘She could have wounded her attacker trying to fight him off,’ I suggested, half-heartedly. I recalled how Walsingham had feared Poole’s reaction if he learned what had been done to his sister’s face; I had not anticipated being the one to tell him.

He considered this; I waited for another sarcastic response, but this time he nodded. ‘That would mean she came in alive,’ he said, looking up at the wall.

‘I think you’re right. I can’t see anyone getting a dead body over that. It would take two men at least. But why would she be here at all?’

‘Well, there’s the question. She must have arranged to meet someone.’

He strode away abruptly, tearing at the tall weeds that tangled at the foot of the wall. I watched the ferocity of his movements. So much for keeping his countenance. I reached up and broke a low branch from the tree, sturdy enough to bend back the undergrowth, and swiped back and forth without conviction; I was certain that a killer organised enough to plan such a grotesque display would not have left anything to incriminate himself in the place he wanted the girl found. I wondered again why he would have chosen this spot – neither busy enough to make a public spectacle of the death, nor obscure enough to suggest they wanted to cover it up. It only made sense if my theory about the mutilation was correct, and they were making an allusion to Clara Poole being a whore, and a betrayer. Perhaps I was reading too much into it, and the location was simply convenient, but I found that hard to believe; with a lot less effort her killer could have left her in the street outside. This was Southwark; a body in the gutter was barely cause to break stride for most passers-by.

I pulled myself up into the lower branches of the tree to take a look over at the street, aware of Poole pausing to watch me. Smears of blood had stained the bricks at the top; it looked as if the killer had escaped this way after arranging the body. I was trying to calculate how long the whole business might have taken him, when I glanced down and saw an unmistakable glint of metal through the brambles beneath the tree.

‘Found something?’ Poole asked, straightening and wiping his hands on his breeches.

‘Wait there.’ I shinned down and plunged into the undergrowth to grab the object.

He was almost breathing on my neck when I emerged, hands and arms shredded by thorns and clutching a gold locket, its chain snapped. I held it out to him.

‘Fuck me,’ he said, letting out a slow, shaky breath.

‘Is it hers?’

He nodded, turning it over in his hands. The face was engraved with scrolled letters entwined in a pattern of flowers and leaves.

‘It was her mother’s. She passed it on to Clara when she was dying. Look, here.’ He pressed the catch and the locket sprang open to reveal a curled lock of red-gold hair tucked inside. ‘Clara never took it off. But she wore it under her clothes, in case anyone got close enough to read the inscription.’

He clicked the face shut again and lifted it so that I could see more clearly. Around the edge, the engraved letters spelled out ‘Veritas Temporis Filia’. I raised my eyes and met his.

‘ Truth is the daughter of time . But why should that be hidden?’

He seemed pleased by my ignorance. ‘You really don’t know? It was the motto of Mary Tudor, the Queen’s sister, may she burn in Hell.’

‘Bloody Mary? But why did Clara have that?’

‘Ann – Clara’s mother – served in Queen Mary’s household as a young woman. Ann was twenty-five when Mary died, and Elizabeth took the throne. You didn’t go about telling people you’d worked for Bloody Mary after that – you kept your mouth shut and acted like a good Protestant if you didn’t want repercussions. My father forbade Ann ever to speak of it. But she used to tell her stories to Clara, as soon as she was old enough to hear.’

‘So Ann was Catholic too?’ I wondered what effect those old stories might have had on Clara. Could she have harboured secret sympathies for Babington and his friends, despite her debt to Walsingham?

‘Ann worshipped as the law demanded, my father was careful about that. He was taking enough risks with his own double life, he didn’t want his wife doing the same. But Clara said she never gave up her rosary. Nor this locket. Clara wouldn’t have been parted from this lightly.’ His jaw clenched. ‘See here where the chain is broken? Do you suppose he tore it off her if she was resisting him?’

I rubbed the backs of my hands where the thorns had pricked them, glancing to either side with an uneasy sense of being watched. Something didn’t feel right here; I had known that feeling too often not to trust my instincts. It seemed to me that Clara’s locket had jumped too readily to my hand. If the girl’s shoes and sleeves had been stripped from her to sell before her body was handed over, surely a piece of gold jewellery would not have been left behind unless someone wanted it found? We were the only souls in the graveyard, and yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were playing on a stage, for the benefit of an unseen spectator. I pulled the kerchief up around my face again, just in case.