A Deadly Complot: Elizabethan spies conspire to defend the realm... by C. P. Giuliani

Author:C. P. Giuliani [Giuliani, C. P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sapere Books
Published: 2024-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

It was quick work to see that no grave, and no portion of ground, had been disturbed at St. Helen’s, so, with Skeres in tow, Tom moved nearby to St. Ethelburga, whose small walled yard was a model of fussy neatness, and then to St. Andrew Undershaft — where old graves were being dug up, to make place for a new rank of the dead.

St. Andrew’s sexton — a rather younger man than Lambsfoot — was hard at work together with a boy, disinterring bones, skulls, and rotten scraps of shroud from the soil that last night’s rain had made heavy. The fellow had no qualms about stopping to chat with a pair of idlebys.

When Tom spun him a tale of an old servant being buried there, the man leant on his spade. “’Tis always a sad day, when we’ve to dig up the old ’uns,” he said. “Not that it happens often, mind you — but…” He nudged something in the mound of earth he’d been making, and bent to retrieve a jawless skull. “Makes you think, eh? What was he called, Your Honour’s servant?”

Before Tom could come up with a name, Skeres beat him to it.

“Smith,” he said, all mournful. “Old Ben Smith, as was me dad’s Godbrother. I was an ’obbledehoy when ’e gave up the ghost.”

The sexton held up the skull. “Who knows? Mayhap this here’s your Uncle Ben. Oy!” This was for the boy, who had followed his elder’s lead and was slacking in his efforts. “You’re not paid to count the birds in the sky!”

Which was a little unfair, seeing as the sexton himself went back to his conversation, shaking his head. “Lazy rascal! If he were a bit more awake, we’d have finished before it rained yester-night. Now, ’tis like digging clay.”

Tom saw his opening. “Have you been long at it?”

“Why, no…” The sexton pushed back his cap. “Well, yesterday was the Sabbath. Saturday all day, though, dawn to sunset. Weeks without a drop, and not one poor soul to bury — but when must it rain hard? When we’re a-digging!”

And indeed, apart from on this side of the yard, none of the graves looked recent.

“Lean days, eh, Sexton?” Tom asked.

The man pulled a face — a dearth of burials clearly being a matter for commiseration to him. “At least ’tis quiet. Even the mongrels have been staying away from my graves.”

Tom gave the man a penny for the sake of old Ben Smith, and left him and his boy to their work, half hauling away a fidgety Skeres.

“Do you really have an Uncle Ben buried here, Dolius?” he asked, once they were back in the street.

“Never you mind ’im.” Skeres waved aside his Uncle Ben. “Those ’oles, we must go back and dig! I’ll wager Finch’s stuffed in there!”

“You heard the sexton: no grave was disturbed before Saturday at dawn, and Master Lopes says the hand’s owner has been dead these three or four days.”

“Maybe they buried it on Saturday night — or last night.

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