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to scream as he plummeted downward into the rocky chasm below.
    MacBeth turned and, seeing that he was unobserved, allowed a smile of satisfaction to spread over his features.

AN ENSUING EVIL

Yet I can give you inkling
Of an ensuing evil…
— Henry VIII , Act II, Scene i

    I t’s a body, Master Constable.”
    Master Hardy Drew, Constable of the Bankside Watch, stared in distaste at the wherryman. “I have eyes to see with,” he replied sourly. “Just tell me how you came by it.”
    The stocky boatman put a hand to the back of his head and scratched as if this action were necessary to the process of summoning up his memories. “It were just as we turned midriver to the quay here,” the wherryman began. “We’d brought coal up from Greenwich. I was guiding the barge in when we spotted the body in the river, and so we fished it out.”
    Master Drew glanced down to the body sprawled in a sodden mess on the dirty deck of the coal barge.
    The finding of bodies floating in the Thames was not an unusual occurrence. London was a cesspool of suffering humanity, especially along these banks between London Bridge and Bankside. Master Drew had not been Constable of the Watch for three years without becoming accustomed to bodies being trawled out of this stretch of water whose southern bank came under his policing jurisdiction. Cutthroats, footpads, and all manner of the criminal scum of the city found the river a convenient place to rid themselves of their victims. And it was not just those who had died violent deaths who were disposed of in the river, but also corpses of the poor, sick and diseased, whose relatives couldn’t afford a church burial. The pollution of the water had become so bad that this very year a water reservoir, claimed to be the first of its kind in all Europe, had been opened at Clerkenwell to supply fresh water for the city.
    However, what marked this body out for the attention of the constable, among the half-dozen or so that had been fished from the river this particular Saturday morning, was the fact that it was the body of a well-dressed young man. Despite the effects of his immersion, he bore the stamp of a gentleman. In addition, he had not died of drowning, for his throat had been expertly cut—and no more than twelve hours previously, by the condition of the body.
    The constable bent down and examined the features dispassionately. In life, the young man had been handsome, was well kempt. He had ginger hair, a splattering of freckles across the nose, and a scar, which might have been the result of a knife or sword, across the forehead over the right eye. His age was no more than twenty-one or twenty-two years. Master Drew considered that he might be the son of a squire or someone in the professions—a parsons son, perhaps. The constable’s expert scrutiny had ruled out his being of higher quality, for the clothes, while fashionable, were only of moderately good tailoring. Therefore, the young man had not been someone of flamboyant wealth.
    The wherryman was peering over the constable’s shoulders and sniffed. “Victim of a footpad, most like?”
    Master Drew did not answer, but keeping his leather gloves on, he took the hand of the young man and examined a large and ostentatious ring that was on it. “Since when did a footpad leave jewelry on his victim?” he asked. He removed the ring carefully and held it up. “Ah!” he commented.
    “What, Master Constable?” demanded the wherryman.
    Drew had noticed that the ring, ostentatious though it was, was not really as valuable as first glance might suggest. It boasted no, precious metals or stones, thus fitting the constable’s image of someone who wanted to convey a sense of style without the wealth to back it. He put it into his pocket.
    There was a small leather purse on the man’s belt. Its mouth was not well tied. He opened it without expecting to find anything, so was surprised when a few coins and a key fell out. They were as dry as