The Scar-Crow Men

CHAPTER TWELVE




WITH THREE SWIFT STROKES, WILL POUNDED THE HILT OF HIS rapier on the broad, iron-studded door of the deadhouse. Those sturdy stone walls had housed unclaimed bodies, and those waiting to be claimed, for centuries. Fidgeting, Carpenter cast unsettled glances along the night-dark Bread Street towards St Mary-Le-Bow churchyard. Intermittently, the scarred man pressed a scented kerchief against his nose to keep out the reek of decay which was stronger than usual on that warm night. His gaze eventually alighted on Launceston, immobile on the edge of the circle of light cast by the lantern over the door. The Earl’s pale skin glowed white in the flickering illumination.

‘Let us hope no watchman chooses this moment to deliver a corpse they have stumbled across in the street,’ Carpenter muttered. ‘They already believe the deadhouse to be haunted by its silent inhabitants.’

Launceston raised one eyebrow at his sullen companion, but gave no sign that he was offended.

‘No more bickering this night,’ Will cautioned. ‘You two are like an old married couple.’

Will would have had both his companions silent from the moment the three of them left Liz Longshanks’ stew, but the men had spent the entire journey across the river into London arguing about Carpenter’s woman.

As he waited for an answer to his knock, there at death’s door, he thought of poor Kit once more. Will recalled the last time he had sat with his friend in the Mermaid, drinking beer beside the fire in the small private back room. ‘We have been the best of friends for many years now,’ Kit had said, his tone maudlin. He was hunched over his earthen pot with its silver handle and lid, staring into the murky depths of his ale. ‘Perhaps you are my only true friend.’

‘This business of ours does not make for easy friendships, Kit,’ Will replied. ‘But it is what it is, and we have to make the best of what we have.’

‘I think I am spent. You … you have your Jenny to keep you searching. Your quest for answers. But I have nothing. A few pennies here and there. Is that any reward for the sacrifices we make? The loss of all things that make life worth living? When I entered the halls of Cambridge I thought my days would be spent in writing and thought and joy. Not this.’

Will clapped his friend on the shoulder. ‘You are having a black day, that is all.’

Marlowe shook his head, slopping beer drunkenly as he raised his pot to his lips. ‘Events were set in motion that night we first met, and I fear they are now coming to a head.’

‘Kit, I do not like to see you this way. Let me get you back to your lodgings … or at least to that bawdy-house filled with boys that you love so much.’

Kit pushed Will’s hand away. ‘We understand each other, you and I.’ He looked at Will with raw emotion. ‘Despite all the applause that follows England’s greatest spy, I know that behind it is a tormented man, lonely and lost and at odds with the world in which he has found himself. And you know the truth of my life in the same way. Men like us need our friends, otherwise we are adrift in a stormy sea.’ Marlowe pushed back his stool and lurched to his feet. ‘Know that you have been a good friend to me, Will, and I hope that one day I can be the same to you.’

Grabbing his cloak, Kit had staggered out into the night, throwing off all Will’s attempts to draw him back to the fireside. At the time, Will had put that dark mood down to the drink and the regular melancholy of the writer, but now the note of finality in his friend’s words troubled him. Had Kit foreseen his own death? And had Will ignored those warnings? Had he failed his friend when Kit needed him most? If so, he was a poor friend indeed.

After a moment, shuffling footsteps approached from the other side of the deadhouse door. It swung open with a juddering creak to reveal the mortuary assistant, his beard unkempt, his eyes heavy-lidded. He wore only a filthy shirt and a pair of equally stained hose, the feet a dark brown. His breath had the vinegary stink of ale. His slow, drunken gaze lay on the three arrivals before he looked around for a body.

‘We have no deposit for you,’ Will said with authority. ‘We are here to see a body. A man, brought in this day.’

The assistant moved his stupid eyes from Will to Carpenter and then to Launceston. After he had taken in their fine clothes, he grunted and nodded, shuffling back the way he had come.

‘I think he means us to follow,’ Launceston sniffed.

In the cool entrance hall, dirty sheets lay on the worn flagstones alongside a pile of splintered boards used for transporting the bodies. Two lanterns glowed on opposing walls. The assistant took one of them and, holding it aloft, lit the way down a flight of wide stone steps. At the foot, a large cellar was divided into four rooms by arches, the stone walls black with moisture, glistening in the wavering light of candles. In each vault, large, worn trestles stood in rows. The body of a woman rested on one, her skin white and pockmarked, her neck broken. Her clothes were poor and filthy. A whore, Will guessed. A gutter ran across the centre of the stone flags where the blood and bodily fluids could be sluiced.

‘As cold as the grave,’ Carpenter growled uneasily, unconsciously rubbing his pink scar.

‘And as foul-smelling as the Fleet,’ his leader responded. ‘But we are all used to the stink of death by now.’

Launceston hummed a jolly tune.

The mortuary assistant led them to the farthest vault, where a heavily bloodstained shroud was draped over a body on a trestle. ‘This one?’ he grunted.

‘Leave us,’ Will said. ‘We would be alone with our brother in this sad hour.’

‘I wouldn’t be lifting the sheet,’ the assistant grunted, turning and shuffling back up the steps.

‘We should not be here,’ Carpenter said, a hand to his mouth. He took a step away from the trestle. ‘Why put ourselves at even greater risk of the plague?’

‘The Lord Mayor and the Aldermen have decreed that no plague victims should find their way into the deadhouse. They are dispatched directly to the pits for burial.’ Will eyed the rusty stains that covered the entire length of the sheet.

‘This business reeks of the Unseelie Court,’ the scar-faced man spat. ‘Whenever there is something that stinks of churchyards and night terrors, they are not far behind.’

‘They have been silent in recent times but they circle us like wolves, ready to fall upon us when we display the merest sign of weakness,’ the Earl agreed.

Will took the edge of the sheet and hesitated, thinking of Kit beneath the filthy blanket on the floor of Mrs Bull’s lodging house.

‘You know the bastards are skilled at finding weaknesses and exploiting them. They see our greatest desires, our basest yearnings, and they twist them and draw them out until we follow like fools.’ Launceston’s right hand trembled in anticipation as he watched his leader holding the sheet corner.

‘Get on with it, then,’ Carpenter snapped, flashing a glance towards the shape under the shroud. ‘If these remains can tell us aught of this mystery, let us look and be away.’

The Earl leaned over the trestle as if trying to see through the sheet. ‘You are abnormally squeamish, John. You are no stranger to death.’

‘Not in this form. Some deaths come naturally. Others are necessary. But this …’ Carpenter choked on his words as he pointed to the sodden sheet. ‘This is an abomination.’

‘Let us see.’ Will steeled himself and stripped back the shroud.

Carpenter recoiled, covering his mouth in horror.

Launceston still hovered over the trestle, bemused. ‘I think that is Gavell,’ he muttered.

The corpse was almost unrecognizable as the man who gambled away his meagre earnings in the inns of Bankside. Where two brown eyes had been were now black holes. The straw-coloured hair still stood up in tufts on the head, but the skin of the face, neck and torso had been carefully removed to reveal the oozing, red musculature beneath.

‘Why, this is the work of a master,’ the Earl breathed. He hovered for a long moment, seemingly oblivious to the meaty smell coming off the body. In a slow examination, he moved around the torso, his nose a hand’s-width from the flesh. ‘See here, and here,’ he whispered. ‘The merest knife cuts. The skin has been removed with great skill. This is no butcher’s work.’ His brow furrowed and he looked up. ‘The curious knife you described, the one wielded by your masked attacker. Could it have been designed for this?’ He waved a hand across the sticky corpse.

‘I would say’, Will mused, ‘that it would have been perfectly designed for this task.’ He had a sudden vision of himself lying upon the trestle.

‘What is the point?’ Carpenter’s voice was almost a shriek. ‘Kill a man and be done with it, but why take time to flay him, unless you have lost your wits?’

‘Why, indeed?’ Will rubbed his thumb and forefinger thoughtfully on his chin-hair. He felt a wave of compassion. Gavell was by no description a good man, but he deserved a better ending than this.

‘Wait, what is this?’ the Earl mused. He indicated black streaks smudged across several areas of the raw flesh. Examining them for a moment, he shook his head and moved on. Finally he stood back, his breath short. ‘This may simply be a work of art, like one of Marlowe’s plays. The same attention to detail. The same loving care.’

Will stared into Gavell’s empty eye sockets for a long moment, allowing the detail of the murder to settle on him, and then he said, ‘No. Two spies dead. An attempt on the life of a third. I cannot believe that it is by chance. Turn the body over.’

‘God’s wounds!’ Carpenter cursed. ‘Leave the poor sod be.’

‘If this is a plot, we must divine its nature from whatever we have to hand,’ Will stressed. ‘Turn him over.’

Muttering oaths under his breath, the scar-faced man kept his eyes averted as he gripped the sticky shoulders. Launceston took the ankles without a second thought, and together they eased the body off the puddle of congealing blood with a low, sucking sound. Carpenter grimaced.

Gavell’s grisly remains clunked face down on to the trestle. Will pointed to a mark carved into the muscle of the dead man’s back: a circle, bisected at the compass points with short lines, and with a square at its centre.

‘From this we can surmise that Gavell was not simply dispatched because of the work he did,’ he said. ‘This is not a crude murder. There is thought and meaning in this design.’

‘But what does it mean?’ the Earl asked.

Circling the trestle slowly, Will ignored the question and reflected on the matter at hand. ‘Is someone attempting to kill the spies of England, one by one?’ he said thoughtfully. ‘And if so, to what purpose? Our lives already have little value and we are easily replaced.’

‘Because of what we know?’ Carpenter suggested.

‘And what do we know?’ Will paused as a notion struck him. ‘We know a matter of the greatest importance: the existence of the Unseelie Court. It is a secret held only by the Queen herself, the Privy Council, and we spies under the command of Sir Robert Cecil. It is considered too terrible to be discussed beyond that small group. Even Essex has not been allowed to tell his men, which must leave him greatly aggrieved, for his spies can never be effective without that knowledge.’ Pondering, Will began to walk around the table once more.

‘Yes.’ Launceston’s eyes were like lamps in the half-light. ‘For if all the spies who knew of the Enemy were killed, who could ever stop them?’

Coming to a halt, Will leaned against the damp stone wall and folded his arms. ‘Which raises one other troubling matter. Everyone in England recognizes the work I do as a spy. But who knew Gavell participated in these dark arts?’

Will took another look at the raw, red body. ‘I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that we should heed Master Marlowe in these matters,’ he said quietly, ‘and seek a solution ourselves. Our lives may depend on it.’

‘Surely you do not suspect Cecil?’ Carpenter exclaimed. ‘Or any in our greater circle?’ He turned his back on the corpse and looked towards the steps, as if planning his exit.

‘I suspect everyone until I have proof otherwise,’ Will replied. ‘There is too much that is unknown here, and little that makes sense with the information we have to hand. I would learn more first.’

A loud booming resonated from the deadhouse door above them. Will raised a hand to quiet the other two.

‘A watchman delivering a body,’ Carpenter whispered. ‘Or a beadle.’

At the top of the steps, the deadhouse door creaked open. A loud voice echoed, demanding entry.

‘That is no watchman,’ the Earl said quietly.

Other raised voices were followed by a cry that could only have come from the mortuary assistant.

‘Quickly.’ Flinging the shroud back over the corpse, Will whirled a pointing finger towards a haphazard pile of boards and unused trestles in a large alcove beside the steps. As they darted towards the hiding place, there was another cry and a clatter. The drunken assistant slid down the steps and sprawled on the flagstones, where he lay in a stupor, moaning gently.

The three spies eased themselves behind the trestles and boards and ducked low, finding positions where they could look out into the shadowy mortuary. They’d barely settled into place when the pounding of boots down the stone steps heralded the arrival of five men, their rapiers drawn. The intruders all wore tall-crowned, flat-topped black hats and black cloaks that reached down to their ankles. Will strained to see their faces, but they kept the brims of their hats pulled down. They paused at the foot of the steps and scanned the cellar before the leader said in a gruff voice, ‘Empty. Go.’

With well-drilled speed and efficiency, the other four men responded to the order, fanning out across the mortuary to examine the bodies on the trestles. Uneasy, Will wondered if they were part of the militia. Certainly, the leader stood with an air of authority as he watched his men move quickly around the underground room.

A low, short whistle came from the man who had found Gavell’s body under the sheet. The leader marched over to inspect the corpse and gave a nod of approval. With busy hands, the four other men wrapped the seeping body in the shroud and then, on a count of three, lifted it on to their shoulders.

Will, Carpenter and Launceston exchanged suspicious glances. Gavell’s remains belonged to his family. This theft went against the very laws of the land; no authority would have sanctioned such an act.

The men marched towards the steps, the leader following behind like a mourner. As he neared the hiding place, the glare of a candle lit his face under the brim of his hat. His eyes were the colour of steel, his cheeks pockmarked, and he sported a well-trimmed black beard. Will knew he had seen that face before, perhaps somewhere among the personal guards of one of the nobles at court, but he could not recall exactly.

The mortuary assistant moaned loudly as the intruders passed with Gavell’s body, and he struggled to raise himself up on his arms. The leader of the black-cloaked men stooped down to grab the drunken assistant’s filthy shirt at the neck, and with a rough movement hauled the bleary-eyed face up.

‘If anyone asks what happened to the body of the flayed man, you do not know,’ the steely-eyed man growled. ‘If you speak of this, you will quickly find yourself one of your own customers. Do you understand?’

His eyes wide with fear, the assistant nodded.

The leader of the intruders flung the man back down on the flagstones, and waved a hand at his waiting men. ‘Get him out to the cart and away, quickly. Like the last one,’ he ordered in a low, gravelly voice. ‘No trace must remain.’

The men lurched up the steps with the sticky, cloth-wrapped body, and after a glance around the vaults the leader followed, casting one final, brief look at the mortuary assistant. In that stare, Will read the man’s thoughts: he considered killing the drunken sot, but knew it would raise even greater questions. A missing body could be explained away. A murdered mortuary assistant would have consequences.

When the deadhouse door boomed shut behind the intruders, the drunken man released a pathetic whimper and scrambled up the steps, no doubt to lose himself in more beer. The three spies eased themselves out from their hiding place and stood in troubled silence for a moment.

‘What does this mean?’ Carpenter asked quietly. ‘He said, Like the last one.’

‘Another murder, then,’ Launceston mused. ‘Hidden before we heard of it. But who was the victim?’

‘Someone at court is covering the bloody trail,’ Will replied, his expression grave. ‘This plot reaches further than we ever imagined – to the heart of England itself.’