The Bartholomew Fair Murders (Joan and Matthew Stock Mystery Book 4) by Leonard Tourney

Author:Leonard Tourney [Tourney, Leonard]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Lume Books
Published: 2019-06-13T00:00:00+00:00

12

Arriving breathless at the Close, Joan found Matthew gone from the booth, which was attended only by Peter Bench, still reading his book of poems. “Oh, Peter,” she gasped. He saw how distressed she was and put the book aside.

She did not endeavor to explain; it was all too complicated. She asked where her husband had gone and Peter told her he had gone to the bear garden some few minutes before. She felt another lump of anguish rise in her throat.

Without thanking Peter for this information or indeed saying another syllable, she was off again, caring nothing for the spectacle she was making of herself, darting around like a startled hare.

At the bear garden, at which she arrived within ten minutes of leaving the Close and not without considerable difficulty for the crowds, she was dismayed to see another long line waiting to pay and get in, as though nothing could be seen or done at the fair but one must form a line to do it. She scanned every face and did not see Matthew. She concluded he must be inside already.

Francis Crisp was taking admission at the gate. She ran up to him to ask where Matthew was and he told her that he had gone inside. “Pass ahead yourself, Mrs. Stock. Don’t bother about paying. Compliments of the house.”

Inside the noisy bear garden she found the tiers of seats already full and standing room only below, where the view of the proceedings was the poorest, blocked by hats and shoulders moving about in a constant stir. She insinuated herself amid the bodies until she arrived at the paling separating the spectators from the pit itself, ignoring the slurs upon her character from every side for her boldness.

She looked all around, above, and below, in the tiers. Her vision blurred. A dozen faces she spotted might have been Matthew’s but hats concealed faces and some faces were turned from her in the direction of the bear’s tent. The crowd was clamoring for the bearbaiting to begin. Braces of hounds, soon to be in combat with Samson, joined the uproar. She realized it was hopeless. She prayed Matthew was here and safe, but how could she be sure until she saw him with her own eyes? And even then he was surely vulnerable to the murderer of whom Esmera had spoken and in whose existence Joan now believed beyond doubt.

A trumpet blared somewhere behind her—a long, elegant flourish that, concluding, provoked a mighty cheer of approval from the throng who understood this was the signal for the contest to begin. In the center of the pit Ned Babcock now appeared, smiling proudly and holding his arms aloft as a gesture of silence to the noisy crowd. When the clamor lessened—silence was too much to ask of such a rout—Babcock spoke. He welcomed the spectators to his pit, which he called the Smithfield Bear Gardens, its more elegant title, and referred to those present as “good gentles” and “honored

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