King Arthur's Bones (39 page)

‘I didn’t do it! It was the lions!’ said Davy. ‘They savaged Leman to death. We quarrelled, true, but it was the lions did for your husband!’

‘They may have done their own work,’ said the widow, ‘but be sure you led the way with your knife. I may not be in a great state of grief for my husband, but I would not stoop to murder.’

Davy Owen’s nerve broke. The presence of five accusers was too much. He leaped up, scattering fragments of bone, and bolted past us to the door. It was some moments before we gathered our wits and set off in pursuit. There was no sign of Nano, but the open front door gave clear sign of where his master had gone.

The sun was beginning to go down, but we saw the still-cloaked-and-capped figure running up Tower Hill and then swerving to the left down Petty Wales. I wondered why he was doing this, then realized that it was probably the most direct route to the river. He would have to run down the flank of the Tower, the same path I’d taken that very morning.

We – Edmund, Jack Corner and I – were a couple of hundred yards behind Owen, with Martin Barton and Alice Leman bringing up the rear. He could not escape us, unless he managed to get a ferry across the river and lose himself in the meadows on the far side.

In blind panic Davy Owen ran alongside the Tower wall and across the quay where I had been standing earlier that day. He disappeared over the edge, down the steps. We reached the brink and halted. The tide was going out again.

We saw Davy Owen blundering and squelching across the mud and stone, head down, scarcely conscious of where he was going but doubtless hoping to reach the river and a ferryman.

There were no ferrymen in sight, but the bear was there, sitting by the water’s edge, its yellowy-white coat distinct on the grey foreshore. For all I know it had been sitting there the whole day long, trying to catch fish. There was still no sign of any keeper.

We gazed, horrified, as Davy Owen blundered bear-wards. When he was almost on top of the creature he realized where he was and slid to a stop. Too late! He toppled back in the mud and slime and the animal reared up. Perhaps it was aggrieved that it had spent a day in the sun without a catch. Perhaps it craved human company. Perhaps it wanted vengeance for years of captivity or had been maddened by them. Whatever the reason, it started towards Davy Owen as if to pursue the unfortunate Welshman. It swung one of its mighty paws against his head and I swear we heard the dull clout from where we stood on top of the quay.

Davy Owen swayed and then fell face down in the mud and lay still. If the blow had not killed him, then he would surely be stifled in the mud. The bear dropped back on all fours and, as far as the chain securing it to the stake would permit, snuffed around the body. I could imagine its breath, hot and stinky. Davy Owen did not move. After a time the bear resumed its sitting position by the water, although it no longer splashed its paws in the water. For some reason I felt sorry, not for the (surely) dead man but for the bear.

We stayed where we were, now joined by Martin and Mrs Leman, not certain what to do next.

But there was nothing for us to do and, when a few passersby gathered to look at the dead man and the white bear, we walked away.

You may be interested to hear what happened to the few characters in this story. The death of Leonard Leman was accounted an accident. Maybe Davy Owen had killed him, maybe it was the lions. Rather like the famous Roman, Julius Caesar, the one-time favourite of Queen Elizabeth had been struck and gouged many times, and it was not possible to say who had done what, whether animal or human. All things considered, it was better to blame the lions. Nothing would happen to them; the king was too fond of his creatures. So the (more or less) blameless Alice Leman duly married her steward, Jack Corner, and they are established at Pride House. She took the dwarfish Nano into her employment.

Martin Barton continues to write his satires and grows more carping as he grows more successful. Edmund Shakespeare began to plough a kind of furrow as a player with his brother’s company, with us, with the King’s Men, and he was not doing too badly before things were brought to a premature close. Edmund had already been ploughing another kind of furrow. The woman I’d seen hanging about his ears at the Mermaid tavern bore him a child in the summer of the following year. You remember the one who was called Dolly or Polly, the one with dark curling hair and the big tits? Edmund was ready enough to acknowledge the child as his – which, in itself, marked him out as a decent enough fellow for a player – but the little thing lasted no longer than a few weeks. And the father followed a few months later, dying in the December of 1607. William Shakespeare paid to have the great bell at St Saviour’s in Southwark rung in his memory. I am not sure how far WS lamented his brother’s passing, and if Edmund hadn’t been a Shakespeare I don’t suppose anyone else apart from Dolly or Polly would have given him more than a passing thought or tear either.

Before any of this, we gave a selective account of what had happened to William Shakespeare, Edmund and I. We included the bear. We could hardly have left the bear out, for the fatal attack on an innocent bookseller was briefly the talk of London. We also mentioned some of the other mischief but not the whole story. WS probably guessed there was more to it, but he didn’t press us. He did not even ask how Edmund had acquired the great bump on his forehead. We were sitting in his Silver Street lodgings, drinking, chatting. I was curious about WS’s plan to write a play on the matter of Britain and King Arthur. I recalled that both the bone and some pages of his manuscript had gone missing. Stolen? It seemed not.

‘My landlady took the bone. She thought it was an unhealthy thing to have in her house, and perhaps she was right. I am sorry, Edmund, since you presented it to me, but I fear it has ended up in some midden.’

WS did not seem unduly concerned by the fate of the relic, while Edmund too was unbothered. He seemed more pleased to be in WS’s good books.

‘And the sheets of manuscript?’ I persisted.

‘Nothing sinister, Nick. They must have blown out of the window. I found a few in the garden below. The ink had run and the snails had left silver tracks across them. I think I shall take it as a sign.’

‘A sign?’

‘That I should not pursue the subject of King Arthur. It is a doomed idea, or at least it is not one for me.’

‘I have an idea for a play, William,’ said Edmund. ‘Or for an incident in a play. It would be exciting. A man chased by a bear.’

WS gazed at his brother in disbelief. ‘Chased by a bear? And caught? And eaten? Like that unfortunate bookseller on the Thames.’

‘He wasn’t eaten,’ I said.

‘Good,’ said WS. ‘As I get older I find I am less inclined to put violence and horror on stage. Leave that to the rising generation.’

‘You could have the bear chase the man offstage,’ said Edmund. ‘Then you wouldn’t have to witness anything unpleasant. Sounds only. Cries. Crunching.’

‘Exit pursued by a bear?’

‘Why not?’

‘I’ll think on it,’ said WS.

‘Yeeugh!’

The screech woke Joe Malinferno from his disturbed slumbers. He had been dreaming of a horde of Egyptian mummies rising from their stony sarcophagi and pursuing him down the dingy London streets near where he lodged. Just as the greyish bindings unravelled from the skull of the leading mummy, revealing its gaping, dusty jaw, the scream reverberated in his brain. He sat up abruptly, his tangled shirt sticking uncomfortably to his sweaty torso.

‘Wh . . . aaat?’

His vocal cords were numbed, and he could hardly articulate his own cry of fear. He forced his eyes wide open, half-afraid that his nightmare might manifest itself in the grubby reality of his bedroom. Instead all he could discern in the darkness was a pair of pale, skinny buttocks poking towards him from across the room. He paused to admire them for a few minutes. The girl to whom the buttocks belonged then turned her pallid face towards him.

‘Here. There’s bones in this bag.’

‘Come back to bed . . . Kitten.’ He recalled her name just at the last minute, though its ridiculousness stuck on his tongue. Picking up a bawd in a gin-shop in Tooley Street was not his normal practice, and it wasn’t conducive to remembering the girl’s name later. Still, she had displayed a pleasing aspect last night, and he was drunk and in need of a romp. But by the cold light of day and in a more sober, if hung-over, mood Malinferno found her attractions less certain. However, the bed was still warm, and so were his passions. He beckoned her over to him, lifting the sheets enticingly.

‘They are just some old bones that Augustus Bromhead left me for safekeeping. They are of no consequence.’

The girl pouted, her pinched face puckering ever narrower until she began to resemble a rat. Malinferno was familiar with the appearance of such rodents. Creechurch Lane was on a convenient axis between Billingsgate Fish Market and Spitalfields, and rats infested the neighbourhood around his lodgings. One morning he had awoken to come face to face with a bold example of
Rattus norvegicus
sitting on his chest. He had screamed, and the rat had scurried off back behind the wood panelling that clad the bottom half of Malinferno’s bedroom. Kitten now looked less like the creature she was named after and more like a feline’s best enemy. She was bereft only of a rat’s whiskers. Though now that he looked closer, he could discern a fair sprinkling of hair on her upper lip too. He shuddered and let the sheets drop. Suddenly he was no longer in the mood to continue his amorous adventures. At least not with the pinch-faced Kit, who was now picking up one of the bones. A thigh-bone by its length and thickness, Malinferno reckoned. She waved it in the air.

‘Ooooh! Is it from one of them E-gyptian mummies?’

Malinferno smiled condescendingly. The fashion for all things Egyptian had been occasioned by England’s old enemy, Napoleon Bonaparte, and his invasion of that far-off land twenty years ago or more. Now, in 1818, it appeared that even a low bawd was influenced by the obsessions of the fashionable London set.

‘No. These are a mere hundred and fifty years old. Augustus Bromhead is an antiquarian, not an Egyptologist.’

He could see by Kit’s puzzled look that he had lost her already, and sighed. No use explaining to the girl the fine difference between his own interest in all things ancient and Egyptian, and Bromhead’s immersion in the more mundane and recent history of England. Neither man had much time for the other’s obsession, though both were eager to display their own knowledge to each other. It was only the previous day that Bromhead had thrust at Malinferno the bones that Kit was now playing with.

‘Tell me how old you think these bones are, young Giuseppe.’

The elderly man always used the proper version of Malinferno’s first name. Sometimes Joe thought it was done just to annoy him. Giuseppe was indeed the name with which he had been christened in his father’s native town of Padua. But he had been brought to England as a baby by his mother after the unfortunate demise of his father in circumstances his mother never explained. And as he grew up he easily adopted the familiar name of Joe, though his surname remained exotically Italianate. But Bromhead was strictly observant of formalities, so Giuseppe he was to the rotund, little dwarf of a man. The antiquarian had been perched as always on a high stool in his study amid a perfect blizzard of old texts, ancient stones and maps. Without getting down from his seat, he pushed a large canvas sack across the table towards Malinferno. Joe wondered if this was some sort of test of his scientific abilities. He hesitated a moment.

‘Go on. They won’t bite.’

Bromhead waved his strangely delicate hands at the sack and winked grotesquely. As if by way of explanation of his excitement, he described their origins.

‘I had them dug up myself. Witnessed the exhumation, indeed. At the Church of St Materiana in Trevenna in Cornwall.’

A wink once again contorted his wrinkled features, but it still left Malinferno in the dark concerning Bromhead’s interest in the contents of the sack.

‘How old are they, Augustus?’

Bromhead gave out a cackling laugh.

‘That is what I want you to tell me. You are always dabbling in the unrolling fad. You must know truly ancient bones when you see them.’

The antiquarian was referring to a new trend among society figures for holding a soirée at which an Egyptian mummy was the central guest. But the embalmed body was not there to be treated with respect and honour. A grotesque delectation in unravelling the burial bindings and revealing the skeleton within had gripped the smart set. And it was not scientific curiosity but rather a morbid delight in causing feigned horror that was the purpose. Some ladies affected to swoon quite away when the skull was revealed. Much to Bromhead’s annoyance, Malinferno had already taken part in two such unrollings. Joe, however, saw it as the only opportunity he would have to examine genuine mummies outside of the British Museum. So what if he had to play up to the upper-class set who frequented such events? He was already becoming known as ‘Il Professore’, and he quite liked the notoriety. Nor was he above purloining some of the jewels and other items that were sometimes bound within the funerary cerements. He waved aside Bromhead’s scornful remark.

‘So my perverting the true cause of science is acceptable now that it may be of some use to you, Augustus.’

‘Yes, well . . . we will say no more about that. I suppose you can salvage some knowledge from the depredations of the smart set. Knowledge you can now put to good use by telling me how old these bones are.’

Once again he pushed the canvas sack towards Malinferno. Joe picked it up, and the contents rattled against each other as he hefted the sack over his shoulder.

‘I will give you my considered opinion as to whether they are as old as an Egyptian pharaoh or as recent as something snatched from a grave by the Borough Gang.’

Malinferno’s naming of the best-known gang of bodysnatchers caused Bromhead to glance around nervously. As a man of limited stature, and odd proportions, it was quite possible he was already on some surgeon’s list. There was nothing that such eminent medical men as Astley Cooper liked more than giants and dwarfs to anatomize. And the Borough Gang served their voracious needs. Bromhead’s room, with its dark corners and strange funereal collections of stones and bones, suddenly felt an unpleasant place in which to be. Malinferno laughed at his friend’s frisson of fear, but in truth he too felt a cold finger of horror travel up his spine. The Borough Gang was not one to mess with, especially if you might be on their shopping list. For once, Malinferno gave private thanks for his nondescript appearance. He hurried from the antiquarian’s lodgings and back across the Thames. He deposited the bones in his own rooms, giving them only a cursory glance before resorting once more to the south side of the river Thames. And the gin-shops of Tooley Street, where his meagre funds would stretch further. There he encountered the rat-featured Kitten, and in a rash moment smuggled her into his rooms.