Barney Walker
The dark misdeeds of a 17th Century body snatcher
The door banged shut behind Bishop Tynside as he entered onto the burdened street.
The snow came fast and steady, unheeding of all obstacles in its icy way. The silver
hunchbacked mountains with beacon of smoke looming menacingly over the
whitened place of trade and gossip. Tynside stumbled on through the new kingdom of
white. A sharp cruel blast of merciless air struck his face like a whip, leaving no area
of the priest untouched. Tynside looked round him and his numb hand went to his
small, but punishing dagger. The shadows of whitened objects were cast all around
him, making it impossible to tell if the arm of the law was about to come swing down,
impossible to escape. The cross dangled from Tynside’s neck like a man being slowly
hanged. Tynside tried not to think about the disease that had captured so many others
before. The boarding house he ran stared at him like a Cyclops with its single eye,
black and unblinking, covered in its white burden. The priests hand strayed to his
dagger once again, but this time for a purpose. The purpose which was his job.
Suddenly, a troop of soldiers came scrambling round the corner loaded muskets in
hand with their captain, cloaked in a blood red tunic with a blood thirsty sabre in his
pale ghostlike hand. “Oi priest, have you seen a man with a purse run down this
godforsaken lane?”
“I’ve seen many come down this lane and many with a purse.” Replied the
sweating bishop. Tynside’s head bulged with the thought of the house! Don’t let them
see inside the house! He was about to give another double crossing statement but the
red faced panting captain cut him off;
“Blasted, bloody rubbish! Bloody priests can’t give a simple answer without
reciting the whole scriptures!” Tynside’s heart slowed for a fraction. “Search the area
men!” then giving a belligerent glance to the quivering bishop said “Since the man of
God, here can’t give a direction of where the blighter went.” The soldiers faces
scorned the captain’s own. The bishop’s heart froze, not for the cold but for but for
the thought of the house being searched.
“Captain! The bugger’s on the roof!”
A dark inhuman spectre was leaping across the snow caped peaks, occasionally
slipping in panic.
“Shoot him then! Blast it, shoot him!”
The four half-frozen men raised their muskets and fired at the black, slipping,
stumbling creature. Tynside stepped back in shock as the bedraggled animal of a man
fell. His pitiful fall was cushioned by the (now dark red) snow. The silence of blame
was broken by the captain’s voice. “Right, leave him where he lies, good as a place as
he deserves.” The group of men marched out in to the ever growing wood of snow.
Tynside breathed freely once again. That thief had given Tynside more than a quick
defence from the inescapable arm of the law. He had given him an easy job. There
would be no use for the dagger today. For the time being…
The crooked bishop heaved the thief’s mutilated body onto the rotting,
reddened cart with its foul some stench. The man looked around thirty but the blood,
snow and mud clung to him like limpets, impossible to detach, could have told a
different tale. Tynside hauled the colourless sheet over the dead mans head.
“I’m doing you a favour my friend, you are doing science the expected. More than
you could ever do to society.” And with that he heaved the worn sheet over the man’s
head for the last time. Tynside had changed out of the stale yellowing garment of God
and had detached his cross for a black, impregnable rag which hid all know identity
Barney Walker
from man woman and child. Even the law. He climbed onto the stubborn plank of
death and struck the old dying mule. Everything around the priest was dying, as if a
curse was upon all living things that gazed into the sinful bishop’s shady eyes were to
roll over and die unheeding of anything. The battered mule creaked into life and
began to pod its sorrowful way down enclosed lane, shielded by the white houses and
towards the great, bloated, looming cathedral that was the home of writing and
literature, which was St.Pauls.
They passed the cathedral and headed towards the grey, shapeless lump.
Saffron hill. The thief’s mangled body struck against the rotting cart like a wormstrewn apple strikes against the tree it is mournfully hung from. For the first time in
his butchering “scientific” career, and for a brief and humane moment, Tynside
regretted with all his cold, murdering heart that he had never got involved with the
dirty part of science. But only for a brief moment. A grey, dooming fog had settled,
uninvited, around the hill. The creature of burden steamed and sweated, almost in
vain, up the merciless hill. Trees littered the watery, slush that covered the hill like a
worthless blanket of whiteness. Even from the shallow height that he was, Tynside
could see nothing except a sharp, vague spire. It seemed to Tynside that the entire
town was engulfed in fog and choking, black chimney fluid as if God himself was
raining down ash and sulphur.
A sharp jolt in ancient path caused Tynside’s attention to fix briefly back onto
gnarled path. A cracked, unhinged gate came striding through the gloom, towards
them. The bishop dismounted from the dying cart and strode through the path it
ungraciously offered. Tynside turned and pulled the blood-stained sheet and its
twisted cargo out of the decaying cart. It was like a boulder had come crashing down
onto the middle aged priest. Tynside had to drag the thief’s body along the nature
made path. The pathetic body lurched at every unseen rock, and the useless body
fluids sloshed around every time the body moved. It was a pitiful scene.
After five minutes of intense and exhausting dragging, Tynside and his load
arrived at a misty clearing. The mist was so thick now that Tynside could not even see
the body or the path. Then, standing in a few yards away was a black shape. Tynside
advanced over the dew-sodden ground, in fear that the arm of the law had entrapped
him in its cold arms. As he drew nearer, the figure spoke in a crisp, silencing voice.
“Well?”
“Well what?” Tynside replied icily.
“Have you got the body?” came the crisp reply.
“I always do. A little blood here and there but otherwise.... it’s perfect.”
“Give it to me.”
“Money...then the body” smiled the bishop, hidden in the gloom. The shape
produced a clothed hand which, in turn produced a wad of cracked notes and several
shillings. The priest snatched them, almost inhuman-like.
“Now the body.” Tynside dragged the body over to the figure. The musty breath
of wine filled the air.
“Nice doing business with you sir” announced the gleeful priest. A grunt wafted
back in response. “I will take my leave” continued the bishop. And with that he left
the clearing to the man and body for their own devices. With money in hand he
trudged through the gate and clambered onto the mule and headed down the hill.
Bishop Tynside was a body snatcher.
Barney Walker