A Burnable Book

With one, we’re gay, with two, we teach,

With three, we prophesy.

And four good quarts it takes to bind

Legal senses, legal tongues,

A lawyer’s hands and mind.

Cups and flagons clashed on the last word, drink sloshed, the sobriety of Lent set aside for an evening. The clamour stirred a familiar longing. Though I had spent two formative years at the Temple, my father had not allowed me to remain in the profession. For an esquire’s son the practical application of law was regarded in those days as a rather low trade. Had I been born ten years later I might well have been sitting that night with Pinchbeak and the serjeants instead of on that crowded bench, shrouded in ignorance.

The line of nervous apprentices formed for the tap. As the first hopeful presented himself, the presiding master leaned forward and plucked at his gown, the mark of unsuitability. The young man turned away, his eyes already moist at the prospect of another year before his next chance at admittance. Other unlucky souls followed him out over the next little while until the successful class stood at the front of the hall to great applause. A few pompous speeches, then, with cake and ale served out, the main event began.

Up stood Stephen FitzWilliams, master of the utter barristers. Delighting in his role, he pushed himself on to the pageant wagon, his legs swinging freely between the wheels, his gown hanging loosely on a gaunt frame. He spread his hands above his head, gathering silence.

‘Gentlemen of the law,’ he intoned. ‘I bid you fair evening, and good fare made of our moot!’

‘Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!’ the crowd replied.

‘As your new-appointed liege, your sovereign, your emperor and king—’

Someone threw a fish spine.

‘Leave that off!’ He loudly cleared his throat. ‘It has fallen to me to determine our evening’s weighty matter, to be mooted before you.’

‘Huzzah!’

‘Last year on a similar occasion we mooted some obscure clauses of the Statute of Merton, did we not?’

‘We did!’

‘Our disputations involved the writ of redisseisin. In the Latin of our beloved Parliament, Et inde convicti fuerint et cetera et cetera. Which is glossed, in our Frenchy cant, Ceo serra entendu en le breve de redisseisin vous vous cadew hahoo haloo and thus and so. Shall we revisit this well-trodden ground, as dry as pestled bone?’

‘Nay!’

‘Perhaps we should dabble in the assize of novel disseisin.’

‘Nay!’

‘In default of a tenant en le taile?’

‘Nay!’

‘In the wrongful appropriation by a tortious patron?’

‘Nay!’

‘In theft?’

‘Nay!’

‘In misprision?’

‘Nay!’

‘In the law of bankruptcy?’

‘Nay!’

‘Well then, you leave me no choice!’ A master of delivery, FitzWilliams had brought me and everyone else in the great hall to the edges of our seats.

‘Our subject for this year’s moots shall be a matter of universal and urgent concern.’ He leaned forward, an air of suspense in his thrown whisper. ‘Methinks the matter of our March moot, my matriculating men, must be …’ The pause lengthened until finally FitzWilliams, his head bent back, his nose pointing to the ceiling far above, screamed, ‘MUST BEMURDERRRRR!’

A collective whoop went up from young and old alike, followed by a round of sustained applause. As the claps and stomps faded and the men retook their seats, I glanced over at the upper benches, where the serjeants-at-law sat in high station. Thomas Pinchbeak, I saw, was leaning forward and speaking with some urgency to two of his colleagues. I could understand their consternation, as even the more festive moots generally treated the finer points of property and torts. A murder trial would not be unprecedented, but it would require the substitution of mere spectacle for legal rigor. I was somewhat surprised that the young men had opted for such a subject.

FitzWilliams hopped down and grasped a corner of the drapery. ‘Servants of the law,’ he shouted, his eyes wild, ‘I give you the evening’s bench!’ In one flourish he pulled off the canvas. The applause was thunderous as the crowd took in the mock court on the wagon: the stern judges in a ponderous line, the pompous bailiff, a hunch-backed recorder, and finally the accused, bound standing to a rail by his legs and wrists, his teeth gnashing, his face twisted in mock agony at the imagined hanging in his near future.

The most remarkable part of the spectacle was the scene laid out on a narrow platform jutting forward from the left front of the wagon. A scraggly hawthorn bush, potted in an oaken tub, suggested the outdoors, as did several inches of loose dirt spread around it. On the soil, face down, lay a young man, his torso bare, his waist and legs clad in a flesh-coloured costume, the buttocks exaggerated with padding.

‘Our victim, if you please!’ FitzWilliams called out over the roars of approval. The actor rose to his knees, cutting a ghoulish figure. His chest had been shaved clean and painted with wide crescents traced to suggest breasts. Between the legs of the suit had been sewn a triangle of animal pelt. And from his head, adorned with a wig of long, dark hair, a dried shower of red paint descended in a glistening path, its source a crusted wound mocked up in gruesome detail.

I looked again at the cluster of serjeants. At least five of the powerful men were now visibly agitated, their gestures conveying strong displeasure at the subject of the performance. There was clearly some disagreement, though: I guessed that several of them wished to halt the murder moot, while others felt reluctant to take action, with all the objections this would raise. Yet why, I wondered, was this spectacle provoking their concern at all, given the usual tenor of plays at the Temple? Such pageants were notorious for their bawdy and even violent content, some of them ending in blows; this one appeared no different.

FitzWilliams had pressed a cluster of utter barristers into service as the jury. He held up his hands.

‘Let us review the facts of the case,’ he said. ‘First: before us lies a young woman. A virgin, I’m told – though I have not, personally, performed the requisite inspection.’ He put a finger in the air, drawing earthy calls.

The victim sat up, pursed his rouged lips in a kiss, then, with a wan wave, collapsed. ‘Her head crushed,’ FitzWilliams continued, ‘her fair body stripped of its dress, her raiment laid carelessly over a rock. So far a straightforward matter, no? A fair maiden wandering in a place where a woman should never venture alone. Attacked. Perhaps ravished. Surely killed.’

An exaggerated frown. ‘But consider the complexities of the case before us. First, where did this act most foul occur? Not in London, but outside the walls – indeed in the Moorfields, hard by Bethlem Priory, where the wood are wont to wander.’

A crowd along a side wall sent up a wolfish howl, and my skin went suddenly cold. Katherine Swynford, at La Neyte. It was a young woman … Someone skulled her, out on the Moorfields.

My vision blurred as FitzWilliams continued. ‘The location of the crime introducing, then, the matter of jurisdiction, which some will place under the abbot of Bethlem. Others will contend that the Moorfields as a whole lie within an outer ward of the city. In what court, then, and by whose authority shall this matter be adjudicated?’

A movement to my left. Pinchbeak had summoned two pursuivants.

‘More central to our purposes this evening, though,’ FitzWilliams continued, ‘shall be the nature of the crime: how are we to determine whether we are facing a killing ex malicia praecogitata, or an accidental death? Was she killed with a club to the skull? Or’ – he held up a knife, then placed the blade against his chest – ‘with a steely thrust to her heart?’ At this last word FitzWilliams plunged the knife into his chest and doubled over.

A few shouts of alarm from the more gullible and drunk, but mostly laughter as he withdrew the wooden blade. For me the moot had lost all its humour.

‘Ah, but wait!’ The murmurs died down. ‘We must now reveal the identity of the accused.’ He dug a hand into a pocket. ‘Why, what’s this?’ He pulled out a parchment, waved it before the room. ‘The indictment, honourable gentlemen! Inscribed by His Honour himself, Justice Beelzebub Barnes of Brixton!’ He stood at the top of the aisle between the rows of tables. ‘In this document,’ he shouted, ‘is written the very name of the accused!’

‘Huzzah! Huzzah!’

‘As well as his profession, our next matter for rumination. And what is the profession of our accused, you may ask? A moment …’ He held the document up to the lamplight. ‘Our alleged killer is – a highwayman?’

‘No!’