Mask of Night (35 page)

“Yes, I put it there myself,” said Pearman, half proud, half reluctant, like a conjuror explaining a trick. “When I reached inside with my hand I replaced the key in the lock.”

“It was a sleight of hand. A mere trick.”

I felt obscurely disappointed. Absurd, given my present position, but it was so.

“A trick – but it worked,” said Pearman.

“Not entirely though, because you discovered that your master was still alive when he should have been dead. That was the reason you looked so shocked. You weren’t distracted with grief but you were terrified – terrified of being found out. I knew that wasn’t acting, it couldn’t have been counterfeited.”

“I came back too soon,” said Pearman. “The potion would have taken effect eventually. I know my potions. I was a doctor’s apprentice.”

“But you couldn’t wait for it to take effect by that point. You’d brought this disaster on yourself. In a few moments a whole crowd would be gathering outside that little room, and Doctor Fern was still breathing, still groaning, even while you were crouching over him.”

“God knows what he might have said.”

“He could have accused his apprentice with his dying breath.”

“So I stabbed him through the heart. Then everybody came crowding round.”

We paused here, as if to take breath.

“And Angelica Root? What had she done to deserve to die? How had she offended you? Did you get a good haul from Cats Street?”

Pearman said nothing.

“You are a common thief, Pearman,” I said.

He lifted his cane and I raised Jack’s foil. We stood like that for a time. Then, as if by mutual consent, we lowered our weapons.

“I am no thief. I merely take my dues for harvesting the dead.”

“Dues?”

“From Ralph Bodkin at so much per corpse, provided they went unreported . . . while if I take the property of others who is there to protest? Anyway, it is all gone from this house. I should have known better than to trust it to Hoby’s wife. Her husband was a thief.”

“A thief,” I repeated (and remembered the occasion on which I’d seen John Hoby outside the Tavern, being berated by Jane Davenant. I’d wondered what was in the box he’d unloaded, or rather dropped. Goods looted from a plague house, most likely, and sold to a ready customer.).

“Yes, Hoby was a thief and his widow is no better. She has run off with her brats and my profit.”

“Why did Mistress Root have to die though?” I persisted. “She didn’t die just for a salt cellar surely?”

“Like you, she had started to suspect me.”

“I did not suspect you.”

This was true; I hadn’t.

“You were accustomed to look at me . . . in a certain way.”

“Like Doctor Fern looked at you?”

“I can tell from the eyes. Not that you can do me great harm for I am invulnerable like this.”

He indicated his costume.

“So I wrote a note to test you, to see whether you’d visit Mistress Root for information. But you were too cunning to keep the appointment, and stayed out of my reach.”

I said nothing about the fact that I’d been in the house, hidden under the dead woman’s bed. The murderer’s words confirmed, however, that the letter from the old nurse was a forgery. Pearman sounded calm, almost resigned, yet he must have been half out of his wits if he took murderous action because he believed men and women were looking at him in a certain way. Why then, on the basis of a glance or two, he might believe the whole world to be against him. (Yet, in a sense, he would have been right to believe this.)

“Mistress Root?” I prompted the cloaked man.

“She roused my suspicions by asking me if I had a plentiful supply of figures. So she too had to drink my potion.”

“Figures?”

“The clay images which Doctor Fern used. He would apply a salve to a figure to effect a cure over a distance. Say that a sailor’s wife came to him, having heard that her husband was sick overseas. Or a merchant looking to make his wife pregnant.”

“At least Doctor Fern tried to heal men and women,” I said. “While you merely stuck pins into their images to cause harm.”

“I was curious to see whether it worked.”

“Sarah Constant fell ill because of such a figure.”

“I know nothing about that.”

“But you left one of them outside the door of her house.”

“I scattered them here and there throughout the town. Simple stuff, early days.”

“Her cousin believed that she was being poisoned.”

“Then her cousin will have to explain it.”

“How many have died through your labours, Master Pearman?”

“Not so many. I started with one of the Ferns’ dogs and I moved on to an old woman who beat me once for stealing apples. I took in a carter, and a physician, and an old nurse, with others along the way.”

“Not so many, you say!”

“How can one man compete with the pestilence?”

It was the kind of remark Ralph Bodkin might have made. High-handed, almost unhuman. I wondered whether the doctor had infected the apprentice with his diseased outlook, or whether Pearman had started out so cold and arrogant. They were not dissimilar.

“Look around you, Master Revill. See how many perish daily in this city, in this kingdom. Tell me, whose hand is that?”

“That is God’s will,” I said.

“And all this work was mine,” said Andrew Pearman, making to put his billed mask back on. By doing so, he transformed himself from a man into something monstrous.

I raised my foil to strike at him but he was too quick for me. He lashed out with his cane and caught me on the upper part of my sword arm. The force of the blow brought tears to my eyes and I almost dropped my weapon. Instinctively I stepped back and saved myself from another swingeing blow, this time directed at the region of my eyes.

Pearman said, his voice coming clear now through the hood, “I have beaten a man to death with this.”

I didn’t doubt it and so didn’t reply. Instead I saved my breath and crouched with my back against the door. As I’ve said, the lobby was tiny – if we’d stepped forward a full pace each, we’d have collided – and here I was trapped with a murderous madman. I might have escaped through the door which led into what must have been an equally tiny front room, but the only way to get there was to go past Pearman. I might have unfastened the front door and fled into the street but this would have necessitated fumbling with the handle behind my back and then moving towards my opponent (since the door opened inwards). This would take two or three seconds and during that brief space of time Pearman could disable me with his cane, lash me about the head or neck, get me on the floor, and deal with me at leisure . . .

My only chance was to keep him at a distance with my playhouse sword. I’m no swordsman, as you’re aware, despite Jack Wilson’s best efforts at tuition. Anyway there’s a world of difference between capering about on the stage, flashing your foil, knowing that when you fall down you’ll rise again to general applause, a world of difference between that and fighting for your life in a little room. Like Mercutio, I was more for show than use.

I kept my blade up, darting it rapidly from side to side to impede the jabs and swings of Pearman’s cane. I tried to recall the strokes and lunges which I’d been taught – all those
stocattas
and
imbrocattas
, those
voltes
and
punta riversas
– but my body had no instinctive knowledge of the moves while my head stayed empty.

Or not quite empty since what ran through it was a single word: “Help!”

Meantime Andrew Pearman loomed up on the other side of the lobby, like a great beetle with a flexible, stinging horn. Although he might have restricted his vision slightly by donning his hood, he was used to wearing it and it gave him extra protection against my blade if, by some accident, I’d succeeded in striking home. And his black cloak was nearly as good as armour.

The wound I’d received the night before began to flow with blood once again, and I wiped frantically to clear my eyes. The dark figure with the pale wand would not stay still but rattled about in this confined area, looking for a gap in my guard. He would find it sooner rather than later. He ducked down and weaved about with his cane as if to cut me off at the legs, then reared up and swung at my exposed face, which was already trickling with blood. Each time I succeeded in avoiding his stroke or warding it off with my foil but I was thoroughly on the defensive.

A wave of dizziness swept over me. I suppose it was the effect of the last few hours. Pearman landed a second blow on my sword arm and, although I managed to hang on to my blade, I felt that another hit would cause me to let go. I seemed to see myself from a distance, and Mercutio’s words about “worm’s meat” flew into my head. Incongruous and unwelcome words – but I’d played the character several times, and knew his dying moments better than anyone.

Then, suddenly, Pearman lost his footing. He crashed into the back of the lobby and slid down the wall, his arms spread wide to prevent his fall, his elongated head wagging from side to side. For a second he couldn’t defend himself. I had a single chance. If I didn’t take it now . . . I darted forward with my foil. He saw me coming and, off balance as he was, threw himself to one side. My blade penetrated the soft plaster of the wall (no oak panelling here in Shoe Lane) and then it struck something solid, probably part of the timber frame. The blade bowed – and snapped.

The useless tip was quivering in the wall while I was left holding a jagged stump. Well, it was only a stage sword and not a proper foil tempered in Toledo. It would do for a Tybalt or a Mercutio, it was not meant for the cut-and-thrust of real life.

Pearman regained his balance. The snout of his hood came up. I wiped at my bloody eyes. He raised the cane. I now clutched a few inches of ragged metal while he wielded an implement several times as long. I threw up one arm – the one holding the remains of the foil – to protect my face while, with the other hand, I fumbled at the door handle behind my back.

Now it was my turn to lose my balance. As I was grappling with the handle, my foot slid on something puddled and my legs shot out in front of me. I made a fall which, on stage, would have been executed only by the clown. That is, I landed with an unheroical thump on my bum. My back and head crashed against the door which I’d been struggling to unfasten. Idly I observed that I’d slipped in my own blood, which was now dripping copiously down my face.

Andrew Pearman, the monstrous insect, came forward. It only took him two strides. He straddled me and looked down, what little light there was glinting off his eyepieces. He lifted up his cane. I knew his purpose. He had said, “
I have beaten a man to death with this.
”

There was a thunderous sound and voices calling outside.

“Open up!”

“Nick, are you there?”

Fists beat at the door. My friends shouted out for me. Pearman looked up, or rather he raised his beaked head. I sensed his hesitation, a moment’s hesitation. The thundering of fists on wood redoubled.

“Revill! Answer if you’re inside.”

“Open the door!”

I still held the ragged stump of foil in my right hand. While Pearman was preoccupied with the noise outside, I drove the jagged end into his ankle where he was unprotected, judging the point to a nicety (even if I say it myself) behind the bone. He twisted away to the back of the lobby, tearing out the blade as he did so and leaving it in my hand. He may have cried out or screamed. I don’t know. The battering at the door continued and there was a roaring in my ears, as if the blood was coursing through my head in full spate.

I scrambled on to all fours, scuttled forward and stabbed downwards with my broken foil. The blow was random and I missed. The second wasn’t so random, and I was lucky. With this second stab I ran him through the foot. I felt the stump of the blade go right through and strike the ground underneath. Pearman was still wearing those plain, simple shoes which – as he’d indicated – were fitting for an apprentice. They did not offer much protection against the jagged edge. And I put more force into the second stroke than I had ever put into anything in my life. It was as if the whole world depended on that blow. And yet, when it came to it, the foil-stump went into his foot as easily as a knife into soft butter.

And then, still on all fours, I swung round and unfastened the door. Abel and Jack tumbled into the lobby. Andrew Pearman, making incomprehensible noises, reached down to remove the end of the foil from his foot. But he was distracted and needed both hands to do it, for in my desperation I had forced the broken end down so hard that it had stuck in the boarded floor. And in order to unpin his foot Pearman had to lay down the white cane which he had used to such deadly effect.

Grunting all the while, Pearman jerked at the handle of the foil and it came free – what it cost him in terms of pain I don’t know, but most likely he didn’t feel anything. I have heard that men may be oblivious of their wounds in the heat of battle. Meantime Jack and Abel stood open-mouthed at the sight. A monstrous black-clad insect clawing at its feet.

Then just as Pearman freed his foot and picked up his cane, Jack and Abel moved forward. Pearman flung away the gory stump of the foil – the lobby was so small that I retrieved it almost immediately – and tried to stagger upright to face these fresh enemies. But there was scarcely room for four men to stand quiet and still in this place, let alone engage in a mortal combat.

Pearman was at a disadvantage now. Three against one. He was wounded in both feet. I had stabbed him in the ankle of one foot and (by good fortune) run him through in the other, and he seemed distracted. His great beaked head waved up and down, the evil circles which were his eyepieces catching the light which came through the half-open door.

Jack had obtained another sword from somewhere. Abel produced a small knife. I had got back my broken foil. Without a word, I closed the front door while Jack shifted round to prevent Pearman’s moving into the little room which lay off the lobby. We were so close that we might have been participating in some intimate dance for a foursome. So close that the masked killer found it impossible to lift his cane to achieve a clear, swinging stroke with it. So close that we were like the tightening knot on a noose.