The Sweet Smell of Decay

As I gazed upon her face a small black beetle emerged from the ruins of her right eye. It stood uncertainly upon the crest of her cheekbone as if suddenly reluctant to step out further. Though I looked upon the beetle as if it was something unutterably revolting, still I felt like we two had something in common. The butcher reached over, picked it up gently between his thumb and stubby forefinger then crushed it. I could hardly protest. He wiped its remains upon his shirt.

He smiled at me like we were two brothers engaged in holy conspiracy then poured fluid into the two ravaged sockets out of a small wooden cup before setting to clean out the holes with a piece of soiled linen, humming quietly as he worked. The smell was sweet and rich, like an ancient suet pudding. Great lumps of congealed sticky flesh he extracted with the cloth, which he wiped upon his trouser leg. Swallowing gently,
I stood back, giddy for a moment, and breathed in some of the icy, wet air that hung about us like a damp mist. All I could think of was that when we were done here we would not be leaving all of the body behind. Some of it would be walking out with us, stuck upon the butcher’s arse. The cold in the room was a mercy. Walking about the table I positioned myself beside the butcher’s left shoulder so that I could see all, yet not too close.

Her face was white, so white that it must have been her complexion before death also. Pale orange freckles were still visible upon her nose and cheeks, though the rest of her face was now covered with a thin layer of green mould, which hid all subtleties of skin tone. What looked like moss had started to grow about the edges of the thin rope that was still tied across her mouth, biting into its corners so that she seemed to smile. It was not a happy smile, more like the smile of one that has swallowed a fly thinking it was a currant, yet would feign that it was a currant to those watching suspiciously.

Despite the awful empty eyes and her frantic grin, still I could tell that she had been beautiful – this cousin of mine. The butcher looked round at me as if checking my whereabouts, seemingly concerned with my welfare. Then he took a short-bladed knife from inside his coat and carefully cut the cord at the middle of her lips. He had to peel the rope away from the skin where it had become embedded by the bloating flesh. It came away with a sound that reminded me of walking through thick mud. Behind it her teeth were crooked, some still standing as they had before, others wrenched from their roots pointing backwards towards her throat. Tiny wriggling worms played about exposed roots.

‘He pulled it tight with all his strength,’ the butcher
murmured. His face was ripe and weathered, thick-pored skin unblemished by pox. A big, friendly face. The way he spoke was strange – it sounded like Scots. Tall and broad, he had thick arms and he wore thick canvas trousers and a rough, stained linen shirt. His nails were cut very short, the ends of his fingers a dull red. Flakes of old dried blood sat in his cuticles and in the lines of his knuckles. Silver hair grew straight and strong upwards out of his head as if determined to escape the bloody grime that coated his scalp. He was a walking graveyard.

Staring into the girl’s mouth, he cautiously prised her jaws open wide with two giant forefingers. He was having to squint in the poor grey light that seeped into the vestry from inside the church, so I took a candle from the single shelf and held it that he might see better. Grunting, he stuck his knife into her mouth at which point I looked away. The room was bare save for a wooden crucifix on the wall, a cupboard, an array of wooden candlestick holders on the shelf and the table upon which lay the body of Anne Giles.
What
was I doing here in this cursed place?

The butcher stood up gradually and rubbed his back with his palms. Then he exhaled slowly and returned to his work. Lifting up her head with one hand, he carefully unwound the cord from her mouth, then dropped it into a cloth bag that he pulled from within his jacket.

‘We will burn it,’ he explained.

And your clothes with it, I thought to myself, but said nothing.

He took another length of cloth, moistened it, and cleaned up the rest of her face. The edges of the skin where the rope had bitten marked the edges of a jagged, deep ravine now sculpted across her face permanently, at least
until the beetles came back and ate the rest of it later.

‘There she lies,’ said the butcher, wiping his hands on a new piece of cloth in a poor effort to clean them. There she lay indeed, her small, thin body shrouded in a thick cloth dress the colour of which I couldn’t tell in the small, dark room in which we three were grouped together. Her long red hair lay in waves across her shoulders and over her breasts but her face was mutilated almost beyond recognition.

‘You are sure that she be your cousin?’

‘No,’ I replied. ‘I have never met my cousin, indeed never knew she was my cousin.’

‘Oh.’ The butcher looked at me strangely.

I shrugged. Though she was supposed to be my cousin, I had never met her before and so felt no kinship. It was a grim experience to behold her in her current state, but in truth she looked no worse than the severed heads that blew in the breeze over Nonsuch House. The sooner we could get out of this room the better. The air was foul and I was worried that it would seep into my lungs and infect my humour.

Though he had a kindly face and a generous disposition, the way that the butcher looked at me was vexing. Something of his manner made me feel like I was being judged in all that I said. It wasn’t a feeling I much liked. He stared at me now as if I should tell him what to do next.

‘What do you conclude from your inspections?’ I asked him.

‘That some wicked villain cut both her eyes out with a short, wide blade and then tied a cord tight round her mouth so hard that her teeth broke.’

That much was obvious. Standing above me with his hands on his hips, it seemed that he was waiting for me to ask him
another question. We stood in uncomfortable silence.

‘The body has been lying there for three days,’ he said at last.

‘Three days? They left the body in here three days?’

‘Aye, news got about quickly as to the nature of her death. The congregation will not return until they understand the meaning of it.’

‘And so what has happened in three days?’

The butcher watched me like he was suspicious. ‘Little. The King had to be consulted and agents appointed.’

And then they appointed the butcher? This was too strange. And who was it that went all the way to Cocksmouth to tell my father? Odd fish, indeed.

I peered about the small, unventilated room. Thick stone walls were damp to the touch and condensation fell from the ceiling in small drops. Little wonder that the body had started to go green so quick. ‘Has no one told the relatives that she lies here?’

He looked at me as if I were a simple buffoon. ‘You are the relative.’

‘Of course.’ I kept forgetting.

Fixing me with his big brown eyes he seemed determined to extract from me some explanation as to what was going on. You are looking at the wrong man, I thought, but felt no inclination to enlighten him just yet. My brow had started to prickle and my stomach was doing those things that it does just before you vomit. I grasped for the handle of the door that led outside, but the door was locked, so I turned and fled down the aisle of the church, out into the weak winter sunshine. Taking another breath, relieved that I had managed to get this far without unloading, I headed out as far as I could get into
the more remote corners of the churchyard before I had to stop and discharge. The relief, when it came, was blessed.

The ground where I squatted was soft. Birds flitted from bush to grave looking for worms. They seemed interested in the pile that I had deposited. Wild teasel grew close to the hedge. Rainwater that gathers at the base of the plant’s leaves acquires the power to remove warts from a man’s hands. I stroked its wet leaves with my fingertips. ‘Seek peace, and pursue it,’ I said to myself, in an attempt to quell all that was disassembled in my mind and body.

‘An
abundance
of peace, so long as the moon endureth.’ I jumped up and around and found myself staring once more into the face of the butcher. How did such a big lump manage to stay so quiet? Standing with his arms folded, a calm smile upon his lips and eyebrows raised, he eyed the vomit on the ground.

‘Feel free to examine it.’ I stood up and brushed my jacket with my hands, checking that it stayed clean.

He grunted. ‘What do you suggest we do now?’ he asked.

Go to the nearest inn and have a breakfast of cleansing ale and a piece of beef pie is what I felt like doing, but I kept the thought to myself.

‘I suggest we take a look around the church,’ he answered himself.

‘Good idea. I’ll wait here.’ The cold, clean air was good for me.

‘No, sir. This is your game. If you have no appetite for it, then I will go back to my butcher’s shop and cut up cows.’ He stuck his thumbs into a broad, black leather belt and then stuck out his big lump of a chin. Godamercy – the temperament of a small child!

So we went for a walk through the cowquake and got very wet. We revealed nothing out in the graveyard – he poked about
in the leaves a lot with his toe and we wasted an hour of our lives. Then he led us back into the dark, foul church where we walked slowly down the centre aisle, me casting a lazy eye down each pew as we went, he walking down each and every one. Though I walked as slow as I could I still reached the ancient pulpit first. Its surface was scratched, worn and unpolished and the base of it was stained black. Someone had been scrubbing at it. Although I gazed at it a while I couldn’t see anything much to note and my head began to cloud over with boredom and weariness. I sighed and sat myself down in the front pew. It was very quiet. All to be heard was a slow drip coming from some dark, green corner and the sound of the butcher poking around. At last he reached the pulpit, which seemed to fascinate him. He kept rubbing his forefinger up and down the grain of the wood.

‘What have you found?’ I asked when I could stand the tedium no longer.

‘Into Hell, where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.’

‘What is that supposed to mean?’

‘The air in here is wicked and foul.’ On that we could agree.

He dropped his heavy frame onto the pew next to me then laid his legs out before him straight. Musing with his thumb and forefinger on either side of his nose, he at last answered the question properly. ‘I would venture that the man that did this planned it well. He killed her where you are sitting. There is a bloodstain just behind your left shoulder. New it is, you can tell by the colour and the texture of the wood.’

I looked slowly over my shoulder, with dreadful visions of blood dripping from the wood like the tears of an angel, praying silently that the red stain did not curse my jacket. I need not have worried, for all that was to be seen was a small
circle that seemed a little darker than the rest. Who was to say it wasn’t a pattern of the grain? But then I wasn’t a butcher. ‘You’d know about blood,’ I muttered.

‘Aye,’ he growled. ‘I would say that she was hauled from here to the pulpit and tied to it. It was while she was bound to the pulpit that the man took her eyes out. You’ll have seen the big bloodstain on the floor where the wound dripped. No sign of it anywhere else. The rest of the church is clean.’

‘How did she die, then?’ I asked with foreboding.

‘She bled to death.’ He looked again to the pulpit. ‘Someone has been hard at work with a brush and pail.’

I felt ill again.

‘That’s the way it appears to me.’ Standing up, he turned to face me, looking down. ‘See, there are no marks on the door of the church.’

I stood up too, uncomfortable with him looming over me. You never knew what might fall off his head. ‘Why should there be?’

‘It means the murderer had a key to the door, else the door frame would have to be broken.’

‘How so?’

Waggling a finger, he explained. ‘No one leaves their doors unlocked these days, certainly not in these parts, and this killing was carefully planned. So the murderer had a key.’

‘Maybe they were just passing, in a carriage, and the man saw the door open.’

‘Call me cut if you would.’ Bending down he picked something up off the floor. A dead mouse.

I stepped away and folded my hands behind my back. ‘To take a person’s eyes out is surely madness. Why should madness not strike a man suddenly?’

‘The madness you are talking of is born of fury. The madness that happened here was cold and planned. Beside, it is too much to credit that the door was left unlocked, here near to Alsatia, off the road from Fleet Ditch. Too unlikely. The rector would never have left it so. The man had a key, which signifies that he was scheming ahead.’ He headed out back into the wintry graveyard. Out on the porch he stretched back his arm and threw the dead rodent into the bushes, then he wiped his hand on his backside. I made a mental note never to buy meat at his shop. Then he placed the same grisly hand upon my shoulder! My body went rigid.

‘Now, sir. Would you be so kind as to tell me what brings
you
here?’

A fair question. My father’s letter sat snug next to my chest, my ears still burnt from the shrill lecture I had received from Prynne and my courage was still recovering from the threats made to me by Shrewsbury and his henchmen. These were things I knew I would need to share with someone were I to make sense of them, but I didn’t at that time think that I wished to share them with him.

‘All I can tell ye is that Anne Giles is supposed to be my cousin, yet I only discovered it this morning. Before that I had never heard of her. Now I am asked by my father to find out who killed her.’

He looked down at me like he was my uncle, knowing that I didn’t lie; yet knowing also that there was more truth to be told. Given that my uncle had been a foolish man (that had been kicked to death by a cow) this did not endear me to him any the more.