‘Where you goin’?’ a low voice growled into my left ear. A small scream escaped my lips and my bowels came to within a sneeze of emptying themselves into my drawers. Gritting my teeth I growled, hating the poacher for frightening me so badly.
‘I wanted to be sure you were still about. I couldn’t hear you, nor see you.’
‘Nor will you.’ The poacher wandered towards my hole. ‘That’s half a hole, best dig the rest.’ He turned his back on me again and disappeared.
It was still night when my shovel hit the lid of the coffin. The contact was solid, the wood still strong. Clearing the lid right the way across the bottom of the hole, I discovered in the process that my hole was too narrow on all sides. Tired and sweating, my muscles ached and my fingers were raw and swollen. Then the lid was clear enough. I reached out of the hole for the pickaxe, readied myself, then said a little prayer before swinging it.
The corpse was dry and shrunken, skin drawn tight like tree bark, brown, ridged and hard. Yellow teeth stood bared, exposed by the withering of the lips. The eyes were gone, dried and shrunken like two small peas. An awful sight, but no worse than I had imagined. The smell was as a dead fox or dog, no worse than that. The face had no expression on it, it was just a dried-out shell.
Reaching for the oil lamp I stood it as far away from the hole in the wood as I could. The body was still clothed, but the cloth was thin and easy to tear. It resembled nothing more nothing less than a giant seedpod. I could not take the pick to her, the thought made me ill. Nor the shovel. I stood straight and took lungfuls of clean air. My hands were shaking and my stomach cramped. Jumping out of the hole, on impulse, I was suddenly fearful. Where was the poacher? Simon with the big knife? Calling out his name softly, I waited. Turning slowly, listening for a sign of his approach, I called again.
‘You finished?’ He emerged from the gloom.
‘I need your knife.’
I will not relate the detail of what followed. It was disgusting and unpleasant. Sufficient to tell that the corpse opened like a dried fruit and was hollow inside with no sign that a smaller corpse had ever lain there.
Once I had filled the hole, replaced the turf and taken my leave of Simon with the knife, I headed directly to the house of John Stow. My goal was achieved before the sun showed its face and I would be away from Epsom before dawn, but I wasn’t leaving without hearing what Stow had to say. My trousers were seeped in mud from ankle to thigh, my skin was raw and cut, I could feel the sweat and mud encasing my face like a thin mask. No matter. If I scared him to death, then he would deserve it. I tied my horse to the same great oak tree. The cottage was silent, the windows dark, and the chimney lifeless. I walked up the little path and tried the door. It was locked, so I knocked, hard, and kept knocking until I heard movement within. The same small woman as before opened the door to me, slowly. Her face paled and her eyes rolled and there was a loud thud as she landed on the floor. Pushing the door firmly open, I stepped over her body still sat upright, and headed straight for the staircase, following the weak flickerings of candlelight. Stood over his bed I looked down on the small, round, bald patch in the middle of his thin brown hair. He was still fast asleep, faced away from me.
‘Mr Stow,’ I announced myself loudly. Mrs Stow appeared again, peering round the door, wide-eyed and shivering. A brave woman, I considered, and I held out an outstretched palm in an attempt to reassure her. ‘Wake up, Mr Stow!’ I poked him in the ribs with a stiff forefinger. Rolling round to face me, slowly with eyes still closed, scrunched and squinting, he made a disgusting grunting snuffling noise — like a little pig.
‘Methinks you were not expecting me to visit you, else I would not have found you here.’
Stow’s breathing stopped entirely and his eyes opened slowly.
‘Methinks that someone told you I would inform them of what you had told me, and that I would not bother you again.’ I crouched down that I might see Stow better in the moonlight. The hairs in his nose were still and unmoving. ‘Methinks they gave you money.’
Stow pulled himself up in the bed, his eyes wide and unblinking, scanning my filthy face and soiled clothes.
‘What say ye?’
Nothing.
‘I told Ormonde this story, that Keeling’s daughter was with child when she died.’ I stared into Stow’s face, watching to see if he told truth or lie. His little mouth fell open, his brows climbed so that they touched the fringe of his mousy hair.
He licked his lips. ‘That was a secret that I told you.’
‘I fancy it wasn’t a secret, Mr Stow, I fancy that it was a lie. No matter for the moment, because I did not tell Ormonde that it was you that told me. I have not told that to anyone yet. I was keen to do so, yesterday, but now methinks I will not allow it to be told further afield until I have checked the truth of it with Lord Keeling himself. In that case I will be bound to share with him the source of the intelligence,’ I smiled, ‘unless you confess to me yourself that it was a lie, in which case it will be forgotten.’
‘Aye,’ Stow whispered, looking round for his wife, ‘it was a lie.’
‘And you were paid money.’
Peering up, aghast, he stared in horror at my stiff face. ‘Aye, I was paid money. I was told that other men would come to check the rumour, and that so long as I denied it then, that nothing more would come to pass. I would deny that I had told it thee.’
‘Who paid you money?’
He looked at me, horrified. ‘I will never say.’
It was no matter, I reckoned I knew the answer anyway. ‘Why did Jane Keeling throw herself into a pond?’
Stow shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Methinks it was an accident, though Beth Johnson insists she writ a note. None other saw it. Anyhow, there were no marks on her, no sign of a struggle nor a blow. That’s the long and the short of it.’
‘You are a fine actor, Mr Stow. You should be at the playhouse.’
‘Thank you,’ Stow mumbled, not looking up.
‘Farewell.’
Chapter Twenty-One
In Grantcester meadow abundantly.
Alsatia was quiet. Those that had business abroad scurried out of their hovels like cockroaches in search of morsels to eat, infesting the City like vermin. Those that had nothing to do would wait until the freezing dawn gave way to something warmer before surfacing. We reached the narrow alley without being bothered and slipped into its black shadows. I was dressed in Dowling’s butcher clothes I had worn before. Suitable attire for interrogating Hewitt, the mood I was in.
‘Methinks they may be home at this hour,’ Dowling whispered. Thomas and Mary, I supposed he meant.
Inside was empty. The pigs and chickens were gone too.
‘The way of the slothful man is as a hedge of thorns; but the way of the righteous is made plain.’ Dowling suggested happily. Thomas was out working, in other words.
I snorted, ‘What does this man Thomas do to earn his bread?’
‘He labours honestly, but knows not how to store his daily bread once earned.’
‘I suppose he sells stolen pork and chicken meat as part of his righteous way.’ I kicked at the straw and wandered over to the corner, the great trapdoor. There was something on it, moving and rustling. I squinted in the darkness then — Godamercy! Disgusting! — It was a giant rat crouched nibbling at something, unafraid of my approach. I took a broken plank from the debris and threw it at the rat. It ambled off, though only to the nearest black shadow.