by Paul Doherty
‘You will have many children,’ Kathryn told her.
‘Mistress, is there some potion I can take? Or give my . . .’ her voice faltered.
‘Give your husband?’ Kathryn added. ‘Lady Mathilda, I beg you, steer clear of such philtres. They can do more harm than good. Many a woman has stood trial for her life for wrongfully poisoning her husband.’
Mathilda stared at her. ‘Is there nothing?’
Kathryn touched the woman’s cheek gently with her finger. ‘I am a physician, Lady Mathilda, not a liar. It is your husband who should change, be less quick to fill his cup, be more patient when he’s drunk.’ Kathryn looked despairingly over at Thomasina, who just shrugged. ‘Come back,’ Kathryn urged. ‘Come back in a few days. Let me think.’
Thomasina went and fetched the phial of witch hazel. Kathryn refused any payment and watched the woman leave. She waited till the door closed behind her.
‘What can I do?’ she pleaded with Thomasina. ‘It’s a man’s world, and poor Mathilda is going to learn that.’
‘Isn’t there anything?’ Thomasina enquired.
‘Such as what?’ Kathryn snapped. ‘Speak to Sir John Buckler, who will beat his wife even more? God damn him!’
Kathryn went back to her writing-office, where she sat glaring at the wall. She was still in a temper when Colum arrived, cheery-faced, a saddle-bag slung across each shoulder, another linked over his arm. He walked into the kitchen, his face slightly flushed, and Kathryn wondered if he had been drinking. He threw his saddle-bags down on the table, blew a kiss at Thomasina and Agnes, then undid one of the pouches.
‘I bring prizes, Mistress Swinbrooke.’ He handed over a small scroll serrated at the edges. ‘Your indenture.’ Then he gave her a small fat purse. ‘And your first fee. You shall also have this, on loan from the Archbishop. You must take great care of it, I have stood security for you.’ He drew out a thick calfskin-covered tome from the saddlebag and presented it to her.
Kathryn undid the metal clasp. She looked at the title page, engraved in gilt by some long-dead clerk. The Works of Sir Geoffrey Chaucer. Kathryn smoothed the page with her fingers.
‘I shall take good care of it. Thomasina, some wine for our visitor!’
The maid, casting black looks and talking under her breath, hurried out and returned just as quickly, as if she couldn’t bear to leave the Irishman alone with her mistress. She thrust the cup at Colum so hard, the wine splashed onto his hand. The Irishman just smiled his thanks.
Kathryn went to her writing-chamber where she locked the book, indenture and purse in the great iron-barred chest, then returned to the kitchen.
‘Do you bring any further news, Master Murtagh?’
She noticed the fresh glow in his face and how his eyes sparkled.
‘No, but Holbech’s proving to be a good taskmaster. Wood and stone have been ordered and work should soon begin at Kingsmead.’
‘Have your retinue moved in there?’
‘Oh, no, not yet, they are still camped with the rest down near the river Stour.’ Colum was swaying slightly.
‘In which case,’ Kathryn snapped, ‘you can tell Holbech to drink less, and the same applies to you, Master Irishman!’
Kathryn took the cup from Murtagh’s unresisting hands. ‘You are under my roof now and you have drunk enough wine! Some water?’
The Irishman just pulled a face, secretly pleased by Kathryn’s care and fussing over him. He gratefully accepted the tankard of fresh rain-water Agnes brought for him, winked at the wide-eyed girl and sent her scuttling back to the buttery.
‘One further piece of news, Mistress Kathryn,’ he said. ‘You, I and the fair Thomasina have been invited to sup tonight with our collegium of doctors near Queningate. Cotterell has also been invited, and Newington, being Darryl’s father-in-law, will also be there.’ Colum’s eyes narrowed. ‘They say they will answer any of our questions regarding these murders, though I think the invitation was issued by Chaddedon. He appears to be sweet on you,’ Colum added mischievously.
‘That’s my business!’ Kathryn said, trying to hide her embarrassment. ‘What time are we to be there?’
‘About nine.’
‘Then, Irishman, I suggest you shave, wash and make yourself at home in your new quarters!’
Kathryn went to poke furiously at the embers of the fire whilst Thomasina, nose in the air, led a grinning Irishman off to his chamber.
Chapter 8
For a while Kathryn busied herself in the kitchen. She, Agnes and Thomasina went out to look at the herb gardens to ensure that the nasturtium was growing properly.
‘It keeps the soil rich and free of weeds,’ Kathryn explained.
She followed the path round, checking the coriander, mint, thyme, parsley, the deadly foxglove and the even more dangerous poisonous nightshade. She then returned to answer a stream of knocks on the door from patients seeking her attention. Clara, the daughter of Beton the brewer, asked for some cherry wine for her father’s gout. Clement the cobbler needed a herbal poultice for a slit in his wrist. Paulina the poulterer, whom Thomasina privately thought supplemented her income with visits from young men, had to be taken to Kathryn’s private chamber as she required a herbal poultice for what she called ‘a scratching in a most delicate part’. Finally Rawnose arrived with Tim the tinker, who had been stung by a bee and the swelling had become red and sore. Kathryn gently treated him with juice of plantain whilst listening to the self-proclaimed herald of Ottemelle Lane deliver his fresh list of news.
‘Oh, yes,’ Rawnose said. ‘The Guild of Palmers are allowing their members to go to night-watches for the dead of their Guild, provided they abstain from raising apparitions or from indecent games. Petronella of Maidstone has been convicted of mixing powders with spiders and black worms and a herb called Mil . . .’
‘Milfoil?’ Kathryn queried gently.
‘That’s it, Mistress. She used her mixture to summon up demons with the faces of women and the horns of a goat.’
On and on Rawnose chattered, whilst Kathryn wondered about the invitation to supper, a further meeting with Chaddedon, as well as what she should wear for the occasion. Thomasina clattered round the kitchen like a knight in mailed armour, filling pots with water and sending Agnes hither and thither with night-jars, blankets and bolsters for what Thomasina loudly called ‘that grinning Irishman’.
At last Rawnose and his now more placid comrade left. Kathryn washed her hands. She would have liked to have gone to her own writing-office to look at Chaucer’s book but the flame of the hour-candle was spluttering away the rings, so she helped Thomasina take pots of boiling water upstairs to the large steel-bound tub covered by a woollen cloth which stood in the corner of Kathryn’s bedchamber. She and Thomasina filled the tub, adding rose-petals and lavender. Kathryn quickly stripped and washed herself, rubbing her body with Castilian soap and a hard-edged sponge her father had bought in London. She quickly dressed, choosing a satin gown of dark blue embroidered at the cuffs and around the high neck with gold satin, and went down to the kitchen. Thomasina always insisted on doing her hair, a ritual which had taken place before the fire ever since Kathryn had been a little girl. Thomasina shooed Agnes out, sending her on some errand, and brought out the silver-backed brush and comb. Thomasina undid the tresses of her mistress’s hair, letting it fall like a shimmering mass of black silk down her back. She noticed the strands of silver at the temple and tut-tutted softly to herself. She began to comb carefully, her ears straining to make sure Agnes had gone, for Thomasina had decided to seize the opportunity and confront Kathryn with what she had learnt. Kathryn half-turned and smiled.
‘Come on, Thomasina. Say what you have to!’
Thomasina quickly blurted out how she had found the letter, read its filthy contents and tossed it into the fire. She then described her fruitless journey to St Mildred’s graveyard.
‘I did wrong, Mistress,’ she concluded flatly, though her brushing of Kathryn’s hair was as v
igorous as ever. ‘But I have known you since you were a tiny girl. So tell me, what did happen the night Alexander left?’
Kathryn just stared into the flames, soothed by Thomasina’s care and the movement of the brush on her hair. She felt lulled, yet at the same time more alive than she had for years. She had been living a lie, and the presence of the Irishman, the business of the assassin, the feeling of being involved, the admiration of Chaddedon – these had pushed her out of her trance back into reality. She moved her hand, grasped Thomasina’s and squeezed it gently.
‘You did no wrong, Thomasina, so I’ll tell you. Alexander Wyville was a young man of good looks and good family. He was the only child, and his mother, who died a year before our marriage, left him her sole heir.’ She smiled over her shoulder. ‘For God’s sake, Thomasina, you know as much about him as I do. He was an apothecary who courted me, and my father blessed the union. Do you remember the nights we used to spend in this kitchen? Drawing up plans for opening a shop and importing herbs and spices?’
Thomasina nodded. Now was the time to keep silent, though, from the beginning, she’d had her doubts. Nothing much, just rumours of how Alexander visited the tavern opposite St Mildred’s more than he did the church.
Kathryn shrugged. ‘The rest you know. I married Alexander. I wanted to love him, bear his children, but he was two men. The ambitious apothecary and the drunken wife-beater.’ She caught and held Thomasina’s fingers resting on her shoulder. ‘I knew you knew, my father knew, but we all pretended different. How could such a young man have so much hate in him? He envied my father. Then the war broke out again, and Alexander saw it as a chance to win royal favour as an apothecary, a soldier in the King’s wars. He announced his intentions to join Faunte’s forces outside Westgate. My father agreed. I just wanted him to go; but one afternoon, Father came to see me, white-faced, tears brimming in eyes now as hard as glass. He said he wanted Alexander dead.’ Kathryn bit her lip. ‘I asked why, but he muttered something about Alexander being a faithless wastrel as well as a bully.’ Kathryn shrugged. ‘I was too tired, too dazed to reflect on what he said. Father then insisted that you and I spend the night with his kinsman Joscelyn. Do you remember?’
She turned and looked sharply at Thomasina, who nodded.
‘When we came back, my father was very quiet. He looked white-faced and dishevelled and announced Alexander had left the previous evening.’ Kathryn let go of Thomasina’s fingers. ‘I didn’t really care. Then Father became ill. On the morning he died, he asked to see me alone.’
Thomasina kept quiet; she remembered leaving physician Swinbrooke and hurrying along to Kathryn’s chamber to tell her the death rattle had begun in her father’s throat and that he wanted to see her alone.
‘Well . . .’ Kathryn rose and, lifting the hem of her gown, walked towards the door leading into the garden. ‘My father confessed how he had killed Alexander!’
‘Your father murdered Alexander?’
Kathryn spun round, her face drawn, her eyes dark pools of hurt. ‘Yes, murdered. He said, before God, Alexander had deserved it, and how he had confessed the same to Father Cuthbert.’
Thomasina sat down, clutching her stomach as the fear sent her heart hammering.
‘For God’s sake, Mistress,’ she breathed, ‘but where is the corpse? And those messages? They are true?’
‘Aye, according to my father. You see, during the evening we were absent, Alexander had been sitting in the garden bower near the wicket gate. Father took him a cup of claret in a deep-bowled hanaper, which contained a strong infusion of valerian. The drugged wine would have sent Alexander into a sleep from which he would never awake. Father left Alexander to his sottishness and went out of the house, walking the streets until it was over. However, when he came back’ – Kathryn rubbed her sweat-soaked palms together – ‘he found the cup lying on the grass but Alexander had gone. Now Alexander used to go to a favourite spot behind Saint Mildred’s Church, beneath some willow trees overlooking the Stour River. He would always go there to sober up after he had been in his cups.’
Thomasina just nodded.
‘So that evening, just before sunset, my father went there as well, but it was too late. Alexander had either slipped or fallen into the river, leaving only his cloak on the river bank.’ Kathryn blinked away the tears. ‘And that was all.’
Thomasina drew in her breath, breathed deeply and stared down at a stain on the front of her dress. Her mistress’s story made sense. Kathryn’s father had loved his daughter passionately, and though he said little to Thomasina, the maid had known how he had come to hate Alexander’s cruelty and drunken ways. The feckless young man was forever going to his favourite place along the river. Indeed, Thomasina had even suspected Alexander used to meet someone there, and apparently, so had physician Swinbrooke.
‘So Alexander has disappeared, yet someone must know the secret. But who, why and how?’
They both jumped as the kitchen door opened and Colum, dressed in a tawny jerkin, a brilliant white open-necked shirt and green velvet hose, walked slowly into the kitchen. He closed the door quietly behind him and threw his cherry-brown cloak over a stool. Despite her surprise, Kathryn noticed how he had taken great care over his appearance: his face was shaved and he had made some attempt to impose order on his unruly black hair. Thomasina rose like a spitting cat.
‘Never trust an Irishman!’ she hissed. ‘Bum-boys, the lot of them!’
Colum stared at her, shook his head and bowed courteously at Kathryn.
‘Mistress Swinbrooke, I apologise.’ He lifted one of his soft leather boots. ‘They are soft-soled and, since a lad, I tread as quietly as a ghost.’ Colum drew closer, raised Kathryn’s ice-cold hand and brushed it gently with his lips. ‘Before God, Mistress, I did not mean to eavesdrop, but the door was off its latch.’ He let her hand go and stood back to address both women. ‘Yet what does it matter? So a bastard got his just deserts and now someone blackmails you.’ He shrugged. ‘I guessed as much. We all have secrets.’ He looked hard at Thomasina. ‘As I said before, what affects your mistress affects me. She is now the King’s servant and, more importantly, I can help her.’ He gestured with his hand and Kathryn caught the glint of the gold amulet on his wrist. ‘Such a thing is not uncommon. Men disappear every day. If all the deserted wives assembled in one place, they’d form an army.’ Colum looked down and sifted amongst the rushes with the toe of his boot. ‘Mistress, sit down. Thomasina, fetch us some wine, heavily watered, for we have not yet eaten.’
Kathryn did so, nodding at Thomasina to obey, for the Irishman apparently bore her no malice.
Colum cleared his throat. ‘Mistress, I don’t think your father committed murder.’
‘What?’
Colum doggedly shook his head. ‘First, your husband must have survived to tell someone else. Surely, you didn’t tell anyone, and apart from his confessor, your father certainly didn’t.’ Colum closed his eyes and remembered the soldiers’ camp down near the river Stour and Holbech’s list of complaints. ‘Your husband’s corpse, was it ever discovered?’
‘Of course not. My father and I were in no position to demand an inquest!’
‘But your husband’s cloak was found?’
Kathryn agreed. ‘I did make enquiries amongst the muster serjeants if anyone called Wyville had joined them, but they said no.’
Colum tapped the top of the table with his hand.
‘Mistress, if you go farther south along the river, what do you find?’
‘There are mills, dykes to create carp ponds, bridges.’ Kathryn’s voice trailed away and she looked up, her eyes smiling.
‘Of course,’ she breathed. ‘Thomasina, can’t you see? My father was a city physician. For months after Alexander’s disappearance he made careful study of the death rolls for the body of an unnamed man being taken from the river. His search was fruitless, and though he found this strange, my father always accepted it because of his guilt.’ She fingered the gold emb
roidery on the neck of her gown. ‘Master Irishman, you must be right. The Stour is fast-flowing; one of the mills or bridges would have caught and held Alexander’s corpse. But the valerian?’
Colum shrugged. ‘You are the physician, Mistress. Did he drink all of it, or just some of it? Did he gulp it down and retch it up again? I tell you this, Mistress Swinbrooke: your husband did not drown, and you may well not be a widow.’
Kathryn suddenly went cold. ‘Alexander,’ she breathed, ‘might return!’
Kathryn stared down at the table, guilty at the lies she had been feeding herself. On the one hand, her father had confessed to murdering her husband, but to counter that Kathryn had encouraged the belief that Alexander may have met with an accident, drowned himself or just absconded, and would never come back. Whatever had happened, she had comforted herself with the thought that Alexander would not return. Kathryn had never faced the possibility that he might. She clutched Thomasina’s hand.
‘Alexander could still be here in Canterbury!’ Kathryn laughed sharply. ‘He could be the murderer!’
Her agitation grew so marked, Thomasina had to pull at her hand, even as the seed of an idea began to flower in her own mind.
‘Hush, Mistress, the Irishman’ – Thomasina beamed beatifically at Colum – ‘probably for the first time in his life, makes sense. Your father was no murderer. Wyville has probably left and gone to make his fortune, and if he returns, you can seek an annullment in the Church courts, but I don’t think he will!’ Her eyes pleaded with those of Kathryn. ‘Can’t you see, Mistress? The blackmailer knows Alexander will never return; otherwise those filthy messages would not be sent.’
Colum agreed, and despite her shock, Kathryn smiled at how these two were allying themselves in a friendship more unique than that between Pilate and Herod. Agnes’s return from her errand ended the conversation. Colum went out into the garden, and Thomasina had a list of instructions for Agnes, so Kathryn sat for a while reflecting on what she had learnt. She derived some peace from facing the truth behind Alexander’s disappearance and her father’s murderous anger against him. And the black-mailer? Kathryn dismissed him; he would either grow tired or reveal himself for what he was, a criminal not to be feared.