But when he reaches the source of the murmuring, he discovers that Constable Willders has assembled the jury from amongst the wiser parish notables. Two of them are even patrons of the Jackdaw. Perhaps there’s hope for Farzad, wherever he may be.
The only outsider is the clerk that the Queen’s Coroner has sent to represent him and record the proceedings. Nicholas wonders if Danby’s absence means that Solomon Mandel is destined for the same official anonymity as little Ralph Cullen.
The clerk is a mousy little fellow whose nose twitches in the chill air. He hugs his writing box to his chest, as though he expects some Southwark trickster to steal it away the instant he looks elsewhere.
A table has been set out with a bench on either side. Nicholas takes his place with the others. No one seems inclined to remove his cloak or gabardine. A wicked draught nips at their ankles, let in through the places where Mary Tudor’s men were frugal with the mortar when they bricked up the sacristy windows.
‘Now that we are all present, I suggest we begin,’ says Constable Willders. He closes his eyes, puts his hands together in prayer and misquotes a few words from the Gospel according to St James: ‘If any of us here need wisdom, let us open our hearts to Almighty God, and He will provide it.’
Following the Amens, Nicholas hears a muttered, ‘I hope this won’t take long. There’s a lovely fire a-roarin’ at the Griffon.’
Willders invites Nicholas to read out his report of what he saw at Solomon Mandel’s house. He describes briefly how he was able to follow the trail of blood; how he found the door unlatched, and the devastation beyond. Then he recounts the manner in which the Jew died: strapped to a bed, naked, a wound below the left knee – the blood from which accounted for the marks on the Jackdaw’s wall and the subsequent trail – and signs on the victim’s breast of considerable avulsion.
‘Avulsion, Dr Shelby? Can you explain what you mean?’ asks one of the jurors, a chandler from Winchester dock by the name of Frontwell. ‘We are not medical men, here.’
‘Forgive me, Master Frontwell. I didn’t mean to be obscure. Strips of flesh were cut from his chest. “Sliced” would be a better word, or “carved”. Several of them.’
‘You mean he was flayed?’ askes another juror, his face suddenly taking on an even colder hue than that of the others around this already-chilly table.
‘If you prefer it that way, yes. Over an area about the size of my hand.’
‘Flayed like the martyred St Bartholomew,’ enquires another juror. ‘Whilst alive?’
‘Yes.’
‘That is monstrous,’ whispers Frontwell, looking around the ceiling vault as though he hopes to find a morsel of God’s mercy hidden somewhere amongst the cracks.
‘It is my judgement that Mandel died either by the torment of it or from the blood thereby spilt,’ Nicholas says. ‘Probably the former. Solomon Mandel was not a young man, remember.’
‘But who would do such a thing to him?’ Frontwell asks. ‘And to what end?’
‘I heard that young Moor from the Jackdaw has gone missing,’ says a juror whom Nicholas does not recognize. ‘An innocent fellow has no cause to flee, does he?’
Nicholas immediately launches a stout defence of Farzad. He tells of the two fragments of parchment suggesting that Christian zealots might have been responsible for Mandel’s death, under the banner of a red cross. But he is only partially successful. While the jury stops short of accusing Farzad of the crime, it instructs the clerk to refer the matter to a justice of the queen’s peace, so that a proper search can be made and Farzad invited to explain his sudden disappearance – under hard questioning, if necessary. Nicholas alone votes against it.
But doing so does not mean that he thinks Solomon Mandel’s murder and Farzad’s disappearance are unconnected. Far from it. His greatest fear – one that he does not share with the rest of the jury – is that they are inextricably linked. And that somewhere, perhaps not so very far away, a young Persian lad is waiting in terror for the first cut of the same blade that flayed Solomon Mandel.
Waiting beneath a red cross.
On the walk back to his lodgings, Nicholas stops at St Saviour’s church. It is empty, except for an elderly churchwarden in pursuit of a pigeon that has flown in and is now busy shitting on the pews. The man mirrors the bird’s agitated flapping as he chases it around the nave. It is a Catholic pigeon, Nicholas decides on a whimsy, sent by the King of Spain to foul a Protestant church. What else can account for the crimson-faced warden’s distinctly unchristian curses?
‘I’d like to see the subsidy rolls, please – if that’s not too much trouble,’ Nicholas calls out, giving voice to an idea that has come to him during the inquest. ‘You do keep the parish records here?’
The churchwarden breaks off his exertions and comes over. ‘God give you good morrow, Dr Shelby.’
‘And to you, Warden Dymock. The subsidy rolls–’
Warden Dymock frowns, turning his head towards the fluttering shadow high up in the vault, as though he fears a sudden counter-attack. ‘I’m not sure that is possible, without the say-so of an alderman.’
‘I’m asking in an official capacity, on behalf of the Queen’s Coroner,’ Nicholas says, not entirely truthfully.
A smile of understanding from Dymock reveals three missing lower teeth and a little pointed tongue that oozes through the gap, like a snail emerging from its shell. ‘Oh, of course – the inquest. I heard about it from Constable Willders. A dreadful business. Quite dreadful.’
‘There is something I need to check – for the record, that’s all.’
‘Well, in that case…’
The churchwarden leads him into the vestry and takes a key from a collection on his belt. He unlocks a sturdy wooden chest and lifts the lid. Inside, Nicholas can see piles of wide leather-bound books and stacks of vellum rolls, neatly tied with ribbon. They have the dry smell of old ink: the musty accumulation of a century or more of parish diligence. Given Southwark’s general contempt for officialdom, they appear to Nicholas to be surprisingly well maintained.
‘Please put them back in the order you find them, Dr Shelby, otherwise I shall never hear the last of it from the aldermen,’ Dymock says, turning back towards the nave and his battle with the sacrilegious pigeon. ‘Call for me when you’ve done.’
It takes Nicholas only a few moments to locate the latest subsidy roll, drawn up by the petty collectors to calculate how much tax Bankside might contribute to the Exchequer, should the queen demand a fresh imprest in the war with Spain. He has chosen it because it specifically lists foreigners dwelling in the ward. He runs his finger down the column of residents. Listed against each name is the value of their moveable goods, rents or holdings. Skipping rapidly over the English names, he notes a French grocer named Baudry; a Dutch wax-chandler called Hugelyn; and another refugee from the Low Countries, a joiner who goes by the imposing appellation of Johan Hieronymous van Vestergarten.
And then he sees it. The entry he’s been hoping for:
Solomon Mandel, Hebrew; worth assessed at 100 crowns…
So Mandel was comfortably off, despite his humble appearance. Did his killers torture him to find out where his coin was hidden? Nicholas wonders. If they did, they were not local men. Bankside is nothing if not a family, however lawless some of its tribe. The perpetrators of such a brutal crime, committed upon one of its own, could not keep their secret long.