Do We Not Bleed Read online

  Do We Not Bleed?

  The first James Enys mystery

  Patricia Finney

  First published 2013

  Copyright © 2013 Patricia Finney

  This Kindle edition does not require an ISBN,

  but we’re traditionalists, so we’ve given it one anyway.

  ISBN 978-1-909172-08-1

  More about James Enys and his world may be found at

  www.climbingtreebooks.com

  Published by Climbing Tree Books Limited, Truro, Cornwall, UK

  All rights reserved. No reproduction permitted without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Cover design by Liz May at

  www.designthoughts.co.uk

  Maliverny Catlin was drunk, which was unusual for him. It wasn’t his fault. He wasn’t used to aqua vitae and it had only taken a couple of horn beakers’ full.

  He was drunk because he knew he was damned, utterly and finally, without any possibility of remission. After all, why should a good, a just God deign to help someone as damned as he was.

  He staggered along the alleyway, feeling the roughly plastered walls of the houses. Bits of them had been built with pieces of old Whitefriars abbey and filled in with wattle-and-daub. For most of them the only thing holding them up was the weight of other houses on either side. You couldn’t see it in the silver darkness but the walls were pink with the bulls’ blood in the plaster to help to hold it together – as Christ’s blood held the World together. A pretty metaphor. He must have heard it in a sermon somewhere. Anyway, everything was blue in the moonlight but you could still smell the blood.

  He wasn’t exactly lost either. He knew the alley was going the wrong way – he needed to be heading uphill away from the Thames and towards Fleet Street and his house. This alley was leading him parallel to the river.

  At a corner, he paused. Another man was squatting in the corner of two houses where there was a small rubbish tip. He must have been caught by a flux.

  The man swore, turned his face away. Maliverny slurred an apology, also turned politely, coughed, staggered blindly against a wall and found a tiny narrow gap between houses which he thought might lead up to Fleet Street.

  A few steps along and he trod on something horribly squashy. Then his foot stubbed on something soft. He looked down.

  A face looked up at him from her veil of hair, eyes staring and set, the mouth quite peaceful, a dark hole hedged with teeth. The head was towards him, the body was confined by the alley walls, stretched out with her legs apart, her arms propped against the walls, all at awkward angles.

  She was naked. Catlin gulped as his eyes bumped on her breasts, gulped again. Down the centre of her body, starting at her breastbone was a huge black slash. Inside it were glistening things, some pale, some dark. All about her were shining snakes of flesh and removed neatly was a red fleshy pear, with arms, draped on her white leg, shining wetly in the moonlight.

  Catlin thought his heart had stopped too. He couldn’t breathe. He put his hand to his mouth, staggered backward into the alley he had come from. His heel crushed a rat skull, he retched a couple of times and then jack-knifed into the splattering foulness of vomiting.

  He was helpless for a moment, his stomach clutching and cramping until every drop of the accursed booze he had drunk was wasting its fumes from a stinking puddle. He blinked at it. When had he eaten carrots? He had only had a slice of a raised pork pie and bread.

  “Sir,” came a quiet voice beside him, “May I help you?”

  It was the man he had caught relieving himself, now decent again. The hat was pulled down slightly but Catlin recognised the badly pock-scarred face and light build.

  “Mr Enys,” he gasped, spitting and swallowing again, “I... I... forgive me... I am..”

  A flash across his vision of the ruined body behind him hid everything and his stomach twisted again. He leaned over with it. The man he had recognised as Mr James Enys, lawyer, deftly caught his hat when he knocked it off against the wall and waited for the vomiting to finish. He was breathing noticeably through his mouth.

  “Be assured, sir,” said Mr Enys drily, “Your distemper will be much the less in the morning for a trifle of suffering now.”

  The humour in his voice surprised Catlin as much as the fact that he was still there at all. With the plague increasing daily, most people would have nothing to do with someone taken sick suddenly, even if it seemed obvious what was the cause of the trouble. The alley did reek like a still-room. Perhaps Catlin had had more aqua vitae than he had thought.

  Nothing but bile was coming. Catlin coughed, spat. He straightened.

  “Sir, I have disgraced myself,” he said apologetically, flushing with embarrassment. “But... but I think I had cause.”

  Mr Enys lifted his eyebrows.

  “Certainly, sir,” he said affably, handing back the hat.

  “No, I mean...”

  It suddenly occurred to Catlin to wonder if Mr Enys could know about the horror in the tiny passageway only a couple of paces from them. His mind reared away from the thought like a spooked horse. He couldn’t help himself, he gestured at the opening.

  Mr Enys looked surprised, moved to the opening and looked in.

  There was complete silence. Then the man drew a long shuddering breath.

  “Christ Jesus Almighty God,” he swore.

  After a long empty pause, Mr Enys took his hat off for respect. Catlin clutched his off again too. Enys moved closer and peered. Then he stepped back carefully, turned to face Catlin who saw he was shaking all over.

  “It’s Mr Catlin, isn’t it, sir?” he asked softly.

  Catlin nodded, looking shrewdly at the man’s hands and sleeves which were quite clean of blood as far as he could see in the uncertain light. He was wearing a fashionable linen shirt with the linen turned over the sleeve-ends. All was clean of blood.

  And Catlin knew from experience that no one could have done such horror without being splashed in blood. Then he realised that Enys was looking equally carefully at his own hands and sleeves.

  He swallowed once more, against the bitterness of the bile at the back of his throat. At least his head was clearing now. Enys was speaking.

  “I think this was done an hour or two ago for some of the blood has caked,” he said. “I think the... the man who did it cannot be here still. Do you have any candles about yourself? I have no lantern at all nor anything but my tinderbox.”

  Catlin fumbled in his sleeve pocket where he had a candle end. Enys took it, stepped a little way along the alley where there was a small window with a stone ledge. He took out his tinderbox, struck flint on steel, soon the fronds of fireweed fluff were burning and Enys blew gently so he could light the stub of candle.

  Catlin watched, hollow and light-headed, as if he had never seen a man make fire before. Mr Enys’s fingers were thin and nimble, the nails bitten.

  The candle light was a grateful yellow though puffing black smoke and a bad smell because it was a cheap candle, not beeswax but a mix of tallow and remelted candle ends. Catlin could afford better but didn’t.

  Shielding it with his hand, Enys walked back to the narrow passageway and peered into it, then stepped carefully in. Catlin followed, feeling resentful that the younger man was showing more courage than he had, looking at such a thing twice.

  Enys bent down, put his hand out to touch but didn't.

  “Why..?” he muttered to himself.

  “Why what?” Catlin demanded.

  “Why anatomise the poor woman?” Enys’s voice was a whisper.

  “Woman?” said Catlin harshly, his jaw clenching at the reminder of why he was damned. “That’s no woman, it’s a notorious whore.” Then he stopped himself and clamped his lips tight.r />
  From his squatting position, Enys turned his scarred gargoyle’s face, the candle light making deep shadows of his eyesockets.

  “Do you know her then, Mr Catlin?” he asked quietly.

  Catlin hunched his shoulders “I... I have had occasion to question her for her notorious whoredom and her knowledge of... ah... of papistry and treason.”

  “Do you know her name?”

  “I believe it is Ann,” said Catlin as indifferently as he could, “Ann Smith or some such.”

  “And where does she work from? Who is her upright man?” asked Enys, showing he knew something of the ways of whores himself.

  “I have no idea,” said Catlin immediately.

  “Hm,” said Enys, with a cold look. He had edged alongside the corpse carefully so as not to touch anything. He did put a finger down to the whore’s neck, though there was no possibility of life there. “Still warm,” he muttered. He looked gravely at the ruin of the whore’s belly and even peered up between her legs which was shadowed by her knees. Catlin heard a gulp.

  Enys was coming back now, lips pale, face set. The candle had nearly gone and was guttering. It went out completely as he stepped back into the alley.

  “We must find the Watch and alert them,” he said.

  “Why?” Catlin asked, genuinely puzzled. “What would they do save stand about and bleat?”

  “Well sir,” said Enys, with some edge in his voice, “Whom would you suggest? We certainly cannot leave the poor soul lying like this for dogs and rats to find her, it’s indecent.”

  It was indeed, but more so. Somehow the whore was not just naked, Catlin felt, but more than naked, with the violent discovery of her innards an even greater obscenity of exposure than her mere bare flesh could have been.

  “I know you’re a pursuivant, Mr Catlin,” said Enys softly in the darker night left by the end of the candle. “And that you serve a Privy Councillor. Mine own lord is at Court at the moment, or I would go straight to Somerset House. We must tell some man of authority.”

  “My lord is out of London too,” Catlin said, not wanting to explain who it was. He thought for a moment. “Perhaps Mr Recorder Fleetwood should be told?”

  “Yes, a good idea.”

  “Or Mr Topcliffe? In case... in case Papist priests did this?”

  “Papists?” Enys asked, “Why in God’s name should they do this?”

  “Some evil superstition, some vengeance... Or the Jews perhaps?”

  Enys’s silence was a clear sign of his disagreement. Also of his good sense – who would want to defend Papists or Jews to so notorious a Puritan as Catlin? And Catlin had to admit that neither the Papists nor the Jews were very likely to have done it in fact.

  “It could be a madman?” he offered.

  “Of some sort, plainly,” said Enys. “Come sir, let’s go at once to Mr Recorder Fleetwood as you suggested.”

  “We should set a guard.”

  “Certainly,” said Enys, “Who?”

  Catlin thought it through, his normal cold sharp habit of thought returning now the fog of booze had blown away. “Yes,” he said, “I’d not wish to guard her and nor would you, perhaps?”

  “I wouldn’t, sir.”

  “Her ghost...”

  “I don't fear her spirit which is no doubt already facing Judgement,” said Enys showing himself no Papist despite the rumours about his sister, “I fear her killer who may not want his handiwork known.”

  Catlin nodded. Enys led the way up the alley which he obviously knew well and through another narrow passage under an old stone arch still decorated with Papist images from the old Abbey – vines with full bunches, carried on poles by two men, bees and incongruous cows that made the bees relatively the size of dogs. Catlin recognised the quotation from the Book of Joshua of the land of Israel, flowing with milk and honey.

  On Fleet Street everything was quiet except for some beggars dossing down in the shadow of Temple Bar so as to be sure to have good pitches in the morning. Catlin took the lead, heading to the north of Ludgate so they could climb over London Wall where most of it had gone to more important purposes such as building houses. They took a shortcut through Poultry Street and Catlin looked up once to see a flickering light at one of the windows, unusual so late at night.

  Bald Will Shakespeare saw the two of them pass by and sighed. He had sat staring at a blank sheet of paper for hours, completely forgetting how late it was and had used up an entire candle doing it, which was a waste of tuppence. His landlady would be annoyed as well, since she claimed that the light would keep the chickens in her yard wakeful and cause them to stop laying and furthermore was a terrible fire hazard, even though it was inside a glass holder. And she would charge him double for the candle as well.

  He recognised one of the passers by as the person who went by the name of James Enys, utter barrister of Gray’s Inn. The other one he thought was a pursuivant, although he couldn’t remember the name which was quite a peculiar one.

  What were they up to so late at night? They were walking purposefully and not even trying to take care for the Watch, which argued some kind of official business. The glimpse Shakespeare had seen from above of Enys’s face had been of someone who had been shocked to the core.

  Shakespeare shifted uneasily on his stool and wiped his unused pen, put the lid on his ink. He blew out the candle before it went out by itself, causing a stink. He sighed into the gleaming darkness, where the Queen Moon overwhelmed most of her starry courtiers in the cold sky. Maybe?

  He shook his head. He had sat down intending to make a start on his first work for his new patron, the Earl of Southampton. He knew that writing for an earl was very different from writing for the play-going groundlings. It was, in fact, what he was born to do as opposed to pandering to the mob. The earl was highly educated, or at least believed himself to be so and fancied himself a poet: whatever Shakespeare made would need to be elaborate, highly worked, smooth, classical and packed with allusion and simile obscure enough to please the earl’s vanity when he puzzled it out, but not so difficult as to frustrate him.

  And so Shakespeare had stared into space and at his paper all evening. In his head he had another kind of space, labelled “th’Earl of Soton his poem” with certain things about it already shaped. However, in that space was nothing at all at the moment. He was stuck. In fact he had been stuck for a week, putting the damned thing off one way or another. He had got into a speed-drinking competition at the Mermaid before he sat down which may not have helped, although he had hoped it would. Mr Enys had been there too, he remembered.

  Shakespeare smiled. He found the person who went about as the lawyer James Enys quite fascinating, because Shakespeare was one of very few people in the world who knew that the gentleman who was building a good reputation for himself as a man-at-law was in fact not a man but a woman. And as such could not even appear as a witness in court as her proper self, Mrs Portia Morgan.

  She was getting better at aping men, Shakespeare thought. She had lost the habit of fluttering her hands from the wrist when anxious and she had much improved her walk – thanks, he thought, to his advice. She had learned to lengthen her stride and move from her shoulders rather than her hips. She now sat with her legs braced instead of tucked under as formerly. Her swordsmanship was still poor but vastly improved from a month ago when it had been comically bad. Shakespeare had arranged for her to have thrice weekly lessons from the man the Burbages used to plan their swordplay on stage and that was already giving her better-shaped arms and some power to her shoulders. As always, in the creating of an illusion, it was the detail that mattered.

  What was she up to, going about with that pursuivant, whatsisname? Malvolio? Should be, but no. It was Maliverny Catlin. A notorious hunter of papists and a spy. Shakespeare shook his head, went up the ladder to his attic chamber, hauled his boots off and lay down on the straw pallet he used for a bed, still dressed to save time in the morning. He would have to ask her then. Him then. Hi
s head spun in emptiness, so he pulled out his little flask of aqua vitae and took a gulp. Somewhere in the yard, a cock clucked quietly to himself, readying for his head-shattering greeting of the dawn. Shakespeare moaned into his pillow.

  Mr Recorder Fleetwood’s doorkeeper yawned at them from under a nightcap.

  “I’m not awaking his honour for a murdered whore,” he croaked flatly, “What the Devil...”

  “Mr Beamish,” said Catlin tightly, “Nor would I save for the manner of it. Also because the killer may remove the corpse before morning. We only came upon it by chance.”

  The doorkeeper scowled at both of them as if they could have been up to no good themselves. Catlin scowled haughtily back. Beamish sniffed, called over his shoulder for the scrawny youth who was kipping by the fire.

  “No sir,” put in Enys firmly, “This needs two men full grown to guard the place for when the other whores find the body in the morning and more especially when the woman’s upright man finds it, there is likely to be a riot.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because the body was... cut open and this is not the first,” said Enys, “And because I would not have any youngster set eyes on anything so... obscene.”

  The doorkeeper seemed to wake up at last. He blinked a couple of time and then said, “Wait there, sirs.”

  It was a long wait. Catlin was thirsty again. Once the boy had put his head down again on his pallet, he licked dry lips and whispered to Enys. “Not the first?”

  “At least one other,” said Enys, also whispering, “It was all over the Mermaid last week that there was a woman found – as if the hangman had been practising on her for a hanging, drawing and quartering.”

  “I never heard that...”

  Enys smiled. “You never speak to players. It was the players who found her, inside the gates of their new building on Bankside.”

  “Ha,” said Catlin grimly, “I never thought of that. It must be the players who did the murder...”