Mask of Night (34 page)

I almost ran towards the river. At the water’s edge I slid down the muddy bank and plunged my hands into the fast-flowing stream. I wiped at my face repeatedly with handfuls of freezing water, cleaning off the blood which streaked it and picking at the scab-like counterfeit sores.

Then, feeling as if I had wandered in from another world, I made my way in the direction of the town centre. It was a chill morning but the air was like a purge. A few citizens were going about their business by now. Among them were my friends Abel Glaze and Jack Wilson.

“My God, Nick! What happened? We’ve been looking for you all night,” said Jack.

“I see you’ve recovered from the plague, but that lump is new,” said Abel, indicating my swollen forehead.

“First, what happened to
you
? You were supposed to prevent me being carried off.”

Their side of the story was easily told. My two friends had made themselves comfortable in the back quarters of Edmund Cope’s house, waiting for the signal from me or for some sound which would indicate that the false body-carriers had entered the premises. No sound or signal came. Abel confessed that, waiting in the dark, they might have been less than attentive. (I took this to mean that they’d probably fallen asleep, as I’d done.) The first they knew of anything untoward was a great clatter and a sort of suppressed shriek. That would have been Master Kite dropping the silver bowl when I rose up from the dead on my couch. By the time Abel and Jack had gathered themselves and blundered about in the darkness they found the way out locked or blocked. They shouted and beat on the door but to no avail. And by the time they’d climbed through a window in the rear of the property and made their way back into Grove Street, it was night and the area was quite empty.

They plied me with questions. By now we’d returned to the Golden Cross and I was satisfying my hunger and thirst with some bread and ale. Strange, but despite everything my appetite was good. I sketched out what had happened at Bodkin’s house, hardly believing my own ears, so far-fetched did the story seem. After what they’d gone through themselves, though, Abel and Jack were ready enough to accept it.

However, when I reached that point in my narrative where I described how I’d spent the night with corpses, some of which were quite plaguey, my friends shifted uncomfortably on their seats and made to move a little distance away.

“Aren’t you worried for yourself, Nick?” said Abel.

“Yes,” I said. “But I thought I was facing even more imminent dangers. And I have a little protection.”

I unbuttoned my doublet and shirt to display the leather pouch which I’d purchased for sixpence from the bookseller Nathaniel Thornton, at the same time as I obtained Shakespeare’s
Lucrece
and Flower’s
Herbal
. The pouch contained arsenic. If there was something a little odd at first in walking about with an ounce of poison, I soon forgot about it. So far it seemed to have stood me in good stead.

As if this was a cue, my friends also unfastened shirt buttons to reveal their own personal charms or amulets. Jack was sporting a golden chain from which hung a blue stone. This he referred to as an “Eastern Hyacinth”; it provided infallible protection, he assured me. Abel tapped a glass phial which he claimed to have paid a great deal for, since it contained horn of unicorn, ground to powder. I could have told him a tale or two about that but kept silent, reflecting that nobody can be taken in like a confidence-trickster. Anyway as long as we earnestly believe in our charms and amulets, whether true or fraudulent, who is to say that they will not work for us? We were all alive, so far.

After this diversion I continued with my story. When I’d finished, there was a long silence.

“We should report this dreadful doctor to the authorities,” said Abel.

“He
is
one of those authorities,” I said. “All in good time. This isn’t quite over. Kite is dead. I saw him with my own eyes. But there is another individual in this business. Not Bodkin but someone else.”

“Whoever he is, he is a wicked individual,” said Jack.

“Why do you say
he
?” I said.

“Is Susan Constant involved?” said Abel suddenly.

“I don’t know. Why?”

Jack Wilson laughed out loud.

“Because our friend here has been talking to her. He has a soft spot for her.”

“Have you, Abel?”

“She is a lady,” he said simply.

“And you are a player. To say nothing of your former trade.”

“Which trade was that, Abel?”

“It doesn’t matter, Jack. I’d swear my life on it that she is innocent . . . ”

“Innocent of what?”

“Of any accusations.”

“Who’s accused her?”

“You have, Nick, in your mind. You are casting round for people to suspect.”

“They are mostly dead or dying,” I said, thinking of Ralph Bodkin cutting up corpses in his cellar.

There was another silence.

“I have made a small discovery though I don’t know whether it amounts to much,” said Abel. “The house which we were spying on in Shoe Lane, the place near the bawdy-house where we saw – ”

“Yes, I remember.”

“It is occupied by Mrs Hoby and her brood. She is the widow, the new widow, of that carter who drowned in the river after he’d knocked over Mistress Root.”

“That makes sense. The woman referred to the place as a house of mourning,” I said.

“Coincidence, eh?” said Jack.

“Not coincidence,” I said. “John Hoby the carter. He was involved in this as well. He may be dead now but it was his horse standing outside Mr Cope’s house in Grove Street. The horse was a clapped-out piebald. And the cart was the same one that rolled up outside Mistress Root’s, I’d swear, from its sound.”

In some dark recess of my head I remembered the creaking wheels which I’d heard, lapsing in and out of awareness, on my involuntary ride last night.

My thoughts turned to the house in Shoe Lane behind the Golden Cross, the house where the widow dwelt with her brood, the house that had evidently been some kind of meeting place for these thieves and false body-carriers. There were three of them: there was John Hoby (deceased), there was Kit Kite (also deceased), and then there was the other.

Shoe Lane.

Where had Hugh Fern obtained those shoes to play the part of Friar Laurence? Why had he changed back into that fine, silver-buckled pair before his death? Or had it happened
after
his death?

Suddenly I stood up, in my haste knocking over the stool I’d been sitting on.

“What is it, Nick?”

“Jack, your Tybalt sword. The one you had last night. You have it still?”

Jack pulled back his cloak to reveal one of our stage foils. The tip might have been removed so that it was no longer blunt but it remained a pretty paltry weapon.

“Give it me!”

I almost snatched it from his hands and, before my friends could stop me or ask questions, I was out of the door, through the yard and into Cornmarket. I paused to tuck the foil into my belt. I was not permitted to carry such a weapon, the foil being reserved for gentlemen, but these were strange and disordered times. I would not be stopped. No one was going to stop me.

I raced through the maze of alleys and narrow streets that lay on the eastern side of Cornmarket until I reached Shoe Lane. Tucked into a crowded corner was a familiar sight: a piebald horse hitched to a cart whose wheels would surely be creaking if it was on the move. If I wasn’t mistaken my ride the previous evening had been courtesy of this conveyance. And here was the Hobys’ dwelling – a pinched place maybe but even so, for a mere carter and his family, it represented a considerable stake in the world.

The front door was open. I had already that morning walked away from danger. Now I was preparing to put myself in it once more.

I grasped Jack’s foil and pushed the door further open. There was a figure on the other side of the tiny, unfurnished lobby. It was wearing the cloak and bird-like hood with which I was, by now, quite familiar. My heart was beating fast from my run, from fear and excitement.

“There’s nobody here,” said the figure. “No widow, no children. They have taken the stuff.”

I swallowed and said, “They must have known you were coming.”

“Close the door – God’s bones, it’s cold enough.”

The figure seemed to shiver in front of my eyes.

“Perhaps you are sick,” I said. “Like Doctor Bodkin.”

“Close the door.”

“If you take off your hood.”

With one hand he pulled off the hood. The other hand was clutching the thin, whip-like cane with which the dead had been prodded and poked.

I pushed the door shut. There was very little light in the lobby, only what seeped through from a room to one side of it. I didn’t need much illumination, however, to identify Andrew Pearman, the apprentice to Doctor Fern. His face, now it was unmasked, had not changed. It still had that scraped, raw quality.

“I trusted Doctor Bodkin to deal with you,” said Pearman.

“He had other things on his mind. Besides, he told me that he was no murderer.”

“I should have finished the job myself.”

“Why did you change Doctor Fern’s shoes after the play performance?” I said. I looked down at Pearman’s feet. He was wearing the plain shoes which I’d last seen on Hugh Fern’s feet when the Doctor climbed on to the stage as Friar Laurence.

Pearman was quick. He didn’t pretend ignorance of who or what I was talking about. He must have realized that either he or I (or both of us) had nearly reached the end-point.

“Because he was wearing mine. We were of a size. He took them because they were more appropriate for the – what part was he playing?”

“A friar. I made some remark about his footwear, never expecting him to act on it. But why did you change the shoes back again after your master was dead?”

“Because they were my shoes, I say. A mere apprentice is not supposed to wear fine shoes with silver buckles.”

“True,” I said. “Just as a player is not supposed to carry a sword.”

I had noticed that Pearman was wearing his master’s shoes while he stood, in a distracted state, outside the locked room off the inn yard. Had noticed it but not really taken it in. The next time I glimpsed that fine pair they were once more back on the Doctor’s feet.

“It is no crime to take a dead man’s shoes,” said Pearman, “particularly if they belong to you.”

“No crime at all, but it shouldn’t have crossed your mind to do it.”

“Why not?” said Pearman.

“You were distraught. So distraught with grief that it could not have occurred to you to change shoes with a dead man, whoever they belonged to. Why, I heard you groaning and calling out the Doctor’s name.”

“He wasn’t dead then,” said Pearman. “That was why I was calling out, to cover his noise.”

I waited for more, holding my breath.

“He should have been dead, but he wasn’t.”

“What did you do to him?”

“I stabbed him while you were off fetching help.”

“I don’t understand,” I said, scratching my head in a puzzlement that was part genuine, part feigned. If I could keep this man talking now . . .

“It’s very simple, Revill. My master was close to uncovering my secret labours, my work harvesting bodies for Doctor Bodkin – ”

“And your work for yourself.”

“I am entitled to my small pickings.”

“Leave that to one side,” I said. “Tell me why Hugh Fern had to die.”

“We were in conversation before your play started. He assured me that he was very near uncovering a dreadful conspiracy, a sacrilegious business involving Ralph Bodkin. He believed that the other doctor was cutting up corpses. We were all in danger. I had to act straightaway. I do not believe Doctor Fern altogether suspected me – although there was a certain look in his eye. That made it easier for me to do what I had to do.”

I remembered the close conversation between Fern and Pearman which I’d observed in the inn yard. I recalled the clouded expression on that normally cheerful man’s face and, once again, those words of his:
Doctors may be worse employed, believe me. Much worse employed.

“What did you do?”

“I was already inside that little room. I called him in as if I had some secret to impart, I shut the door and offered him drink.”

“Offered?”

“Pinched his nostrils until his mouth gaped open then poured the potion down. My grip was stronger than his. Held him until his struggling ceased then released him so that he fell to the floor. Went out, locking the door behind me.”

“I was there, sitting on the bench with my injured foot. I didn’t see you.”

“You were dozing. But I saw you, Master Revill. And seeing you gave me an idea.”

“You wanted me there when you discovered that he was dead – inside a locked room. In that way there could be no doubt that Doctor Fern had killed himself and been alone at the time.”

“Not killed himself,” said the doctor’s apprentice, “but died a natural death. The poison wouldn’t have shown.”

“Of course,” I said. “Who is to say how a man dies? There is no digging about inside bodies, no dissection. It is not permitted by the laws of God or man.”

Pearman grinned humourlessly.

“Nevertheless, you still required a witness even of this ‘natural’ death. So you – let me see now . . . ”

My mind raced.

“You came back all distracted, wanting to know the whereabouts of your master. That was well acted. You should have been on stage.”

“Acting is a low trade,” said Pearman.

“Then we both went through that mime-show outside the locked room, with you pretending to see something inside and being sweaty and urgent. You convinced me that something was wrong. Then you broke through the panelling on the door – and . . . ”

I saw it clearly now.

“The key,” I said. “There was no key already in the lock on the other side of the door. It was in your own hand all the time. When I reached through to get it, because you’d claimed your own reach wasn’t long enough, the key was slippery to my touch. The metal was warm too. Not surprising since you’d been clutching it in your sweaty palm moments before.”