In time she fell asleep and dreamed. Strangely, she did not dream of her husband, but of the odd serpentlike creature of which Tom Ingram had spoken. She was wandering through woods. The trees and bushes seemed familiar to her. A rain had fallen earlier, for the leaves glistened with moisture and she could smell the strong earthy odor of growing things. It was very pleasant where she walked. She looked up and saw that the branches of the trees were full of birds of all kinds, singing joyously. Joan longed to join them in the air, and no sooner experienced the desire but found herself floating upward. Floating, floating, floating. She felt wonderfully light and contented.
She drew near the branch on which the birds sat.
But then suddenly they ceased singing. They turned their little heads and looked at her oddly with their pinched faces and little round black eyes.
Then, at once, there was a flurry of wings, screams of alarm. The wings beat furiously about her head. She raised her hands to protect her face and eyes. Wings, white wings, everywhere she looked. “Don’t . . . don’t,” she heard herself cry in a strange voice not her own.
When as suddenly it grew quiet, she looked around her to find the birds gone and she was hanging in the air without support. The sense of floating which had so delighted her earlier now terrified her. She reached out to grasp at the limb, pulled herself over to it, and more secure now, stared down at the ground. She wondered what had happened to the birds. A deathly silence had fallen over the woods.
Presently she had the feeling that she was not alone. Someone or something watched her. In time she heard the crackle of twigs. She could see in the distance something moving through the trees; it was all misty to her now, the wood. She couldn’t see clearly and yet she needed to see, for she sensed powerfully danger.
Trembling, she looked around her. The limb to which she clung was a great distance from the one above it. She could go no higher, and the ground was too far below her. There was an unpleasant smell too, something like an animal’s. Was it the thing in the wood or her own fear?
Then through the mist she saw it—not its shape, its visage, but its eye, large, round, glaring at her. The Basilisk. She was seized by a paralysis of dread.
She might have screamed. She wasn’t sure. Suddenly she was sitting upright in the bed in the room and her gown was soaked with sweat and her hands were shaking uncontrollably.
That she had been dreaming made no difference to her. Her presentiment of Matthew’s death and this bizarre dream had unsettled her completely and now made sleep impossible. She got out of bed and walked toward the door and listened. She heard footfalls, a heavy, weary tread, someone mounting the stairs, stopping outside her door.
Her heart was all aflutter from the dream, the abrupt awakening. The fear that someone was approaching her door sent her blood racing at even a faster pace.
The door rattled, and she recoiled in fear.
“Who’s there?” she called in a thin frightened voice.
“Joan?”
“Who is it?”
“It’s your husband. Pray let me in.”
Quickly she pulled the bolt and a second later Matthew was in her arms, smothering her with kisses. They held each other for a long time, like young lovers enjoying a first embrace.
She fastened the door behind him and hastened to light a candle. In a moment it illuminated the chamber and her husband, who was pale and damply bedraggled.
He walked over to the bed and collapsed upon it.
“In God’s name, what happened to you?” she exclaimed, holding the candle aloft so that she could inspect him for injuries. “Are you hurt?”
“In pride for the most part,” he muttered. “I was near an inch to drowning this day.”
Death by water. She shuddered at the recollection. So her terrible vision had some substance after all. She stared at him. He was lying there massaging his left foot. Obviously he had walked a great distance, and just as obviously, this was an exhausted man, no ghost come to pay a final visit.
When he had recovered some of his strength he told her of his near-drowning, about Starkey, and about his other experiences since he had last seen her. “I walked back,” he said. “I lost my purse in the river and had nothing left about me but my good name, which will buy very little here.”
“It was a great distance, then?” she inquired.
“Nay, not so much as I might not have walked in two hours, but I remained concealed by the river until dark, and then did not dare enter the inn until the house was in bed. Castell and his ruffians think me dead. May they continue to think so.”
“As well they might, after the wherry sank,” she said with a mixture of pity and indignation. “This Starkey, then, did not see you afloat upon the plank?”
“I think not. After he scrambled ashore I doubt he would have remained about the bridge to have onlookers inquire into the incident.”
“You took a great chance returning to the inn.”
“I had no other course,” Matthew said, inviting her to sit by him upon the bed. “I had no money and no clothes, was a marked man should I show my face in any public place, and my feet would not carry me home again, not to Chelmsford.”
Then she told him her own news. “Thomas Ingram turned up outside my window this morning early.”
“Tom Ingram alive, then!” Matthew exclaimed. “Heaven be thanked!”
“You may well thank heaven,” she said, “for if he say true, this Gervase Castell is up to more mischief than you thought. He’s a blackmailer and, it would seem, a traitor to boot.”
She provided a full version of Tom Ingram’s story, upon hearing which Matthew sighed heavily; he sank back onto the bed. “This is even as Mary Skelton said. I must go to Sir Robert at once.”
“Rest. Now, at least,” she said. “When you have recovered your strength we will lay our plans.”
“I think I’m too weary to sleep,” he said. He was slowly removing his wrinkled, soggy clothes.
“My poor dear heart.” She bent down to kiss him on the cheek. She undressed, too, and soon got into bed beside him. He put his arm around her and buried his face in her hair.
“I’m so glad you’ve come,” he murmured drowsily.
“You could not have kept me at home once I knew what danger you courted, Matthew. Matthew?”
But he was already asleep. His chest was rising and falling rhythmically. She blew out the candle and lay thanking all the saints for her husband’s delivery, until she heard the chimes of midnight. One, two, three, she counted them. She did not make it to twelve before she herself drifted away.
When they awoke, their room was already suffused with the soft yellow glow of morning. They could hear footsteps and voices in the passage without their door. Matthew’s second comment of the new day—the first having been a greeting to his wife—was a declaration of the state of his stomach. It was powerfully empty, he said. He had not eaten since yesterday’s breakfast and was less a man by a good ten pounds or more.
“You cannot go down to breakfast,” she said.
“No,” he agreed, looking very pitiful with his unshaven cheeks.
“I’ll have something brought up. I’ll order enough for us both.”
Within the hour, a maid had brought a rasher of bacon, a half-loaf of bread, and some good quality wine to wash it all down with. Matthew remained conceded beneath the covers, he and his wife having agreed in the meantime that it was best if no one at the inn knew of his return.
“First we’ll eat, then we’ll talk,” she announced decisively.
Matthew ate the bulk of the food; the rest they secured for later in the day.
“Here’s where we stand,” she said, examining her face in the tiny hand mirror Matthew had given her upon her last birthday. “It’s plain you are a marked man. If Castell or his toads discover Starkey has bungled his work they will lose no time in arranging another misadventure.”
“Very likely—if not certain,” Matthew agreed.
; “Then you must stay hidden,” she said.
“But where? I can’t remain in the room.”
“Indeed you cannot,” she said. She put her mirror in her bag and looked him up and down as though the answer to their dilemma were to be written upon his forehead, breast, or legs. “Were you not so plump, husband, we could fit you out in my second gown and send you forth as a woman.”
“God’s body!” Matthew exclaimed. “You will send me forth as my own corpse before I’ll don a woman’s garb.” “Tut, tut, tut,” she chided. “This is serious business, Matthew. There’s no time for your japing now.”
“I do not jape, wife,” Matthew said sternly.
She gave him another searching look, sighed, then smiled with satisfaction.
“Be it as you will,” she said, her mouth now having that peculiar expression it had when she had made up her mind about something. “You shall retain your precious manhood and escape the Blue Boar at the same time.” She collected the cup, plate, and bowl that remained of their breakfast and put them on the tray. “I have a new calling for you, husband, if you’re up to it.”
“You will put me to service?” Matthew inquired, guessing her intent.
“I will,” she said with determination.
Within a half-hour she had her husband dressed out in shirt and breeches, had combed his thick black hair forward so that it came near to covering his eyes, and tied about his waist the remains of her smock so that it very much appeared an apron.
“But they know me below,” Matthew protested, futilely. *
“Indeed, the innkeeper does, and his daughter, and one or two else, and perhaps a Chelmsford merchant or tradesman lying here presently. But if you move quickly none will see you leave, and they that do will not look twice at a portly serving man bearing the remains of breakfast below to the kitchen. Look you now, here’s money for your pocket. Find lodging elsewhere—the Bell on the Strand. Assume a false name—say of our neighbor, Miles Merry weather. I’ll have your luggage sent after you and depart myself, telling first the innkeeper that I despair of your return and have gone back to Chelmsford to bewail the loss of a good husband. Should one of Castell’s men come inquiring of you, the innkeeper may convey to him so much of this story that will confirm your death and put the villain at his ease, whilst we—”
“Whilst we do what?” Matthew' wanted to know.
“Whilst we-”
She hesitated, unsure herself. Then she remembered Cecil. “Whilst you call upon Sir Robert,” she continued, confidently now. “Tell him every whit. Including what Tom Ingram conveyed to me.”
Matthew thought about this. Joan was right. Cecil was the next step. Treason was afoot and who knew its stride? And who could stop its advance but Cecil? But what did Matthew really know, know for himself? His ignorance oppressed him. He said, “It’s a poor little tale I have to tell—all second-and third-hand save Starkey’s mischief at the river and Starkey will say that was an accident.”
“An accident,” she murmured in disgust. But she realized her husband was right. What did they They sat on the bed, hunched over and thoughtful. Joan rubbed her forehead, trying to clear away the mist of her ignorance.
“It’s proper evidence that we lack.”
“Evidence,” returned Matthew. “And it will not be easy to find. Castell’s no fool. His courses tire subtle and treacherous. Had Tom not stumbled on the plot by mere chance it would be known only to the jeweler.”
“And to his victims,” Joan added.
“Yes, to his victims.”
“They know well enough his treachery,” Joan said, thinking harder, making headway against the mist. “Yes,” said Matthew, “it’s a tight little circle.”
“A what?”
“A tight little circle,” Matthew repeated, not looking at her. He was staring out the window. The morning sky was flat blue and clear.
The figure of speech surprised her. Her husband was ordinarily not of a poetic turn. But how apt it was. A tight little circle. The blackmailer and his victims. The circle ever widening as the jeweler’s victims increased in number, but it remained tight, impenetrable. Only Thomas Ingram had glimpsed its workings, and he didn’t even know the identity of the victim. Castell would deny everything, the victim would deny everything. Blackmail was the most private of crimes. The victim had as much reason as the blackmailer to want the circle kept intact, for he had much to lose.
If only there was a victim who had nothing to lose— one who might come right out and say, this thing the jeweler tried to do, this thing the jeweler wanted in exchange for his silence.
How to penetrate the circle? Find the right victim?
And then it came to her, full-blown in an instant, sprung from her forehead all nimble and ready. What was needed was a new victim—one who had nothing to lose although Castell thought he did. Someone Castell would risk everything to enclose in the circle. And someone whose testimony would be unimpeachable.
To Joan the idea seemed absolutely perfect.
Turning to face him, she grasped Matthew’s hands and pressed them eagerly, her heart fluttering with excitement. “Look, the jeweler doesn’t know me.”
“So?” Matthew looked at his wife guardedly. Why was she smiling at him that way, the way she did when she was on the verge of triumphing over his better judgment? “Now wait—”
“He doesn’t know that I am your wife.”
“I’ll not have you mixed in this. Castell is dangerous.” “Yes, all the more reason for us to act speedily.” “Why us? Now it’s the business of Cecil and the Council.”
“But you agreed we needed evidence,” she protested. “I said so, but let Sir Robert secure it.”
She stared at him as though he had just said a foolish thing. “We—you and I—can secure the evidence.”
He shook his head sadly.
“Look, ’ ’ she pressed, “your life remains in danger. What, do you think to remain Miles Merryweather? Our good friend will want his name back. And you, husband, will want to show your face in London again without fear of Castell or Starkey or whatever other devil he keeps about him.”
“But Cecil, the Council—”
“No, Matthew,” she said firmly. “You yourself have said it. We know very little, but only we can find out much more and quickly, knowing what little we do.”
“No,” he said firmly, crossing his arms, asserting his maleness.
But she could be firm too. “Matthew.”
“No.”
“I have a plan,” she said. “If you will bear the hearing of it.”
“No.”
“You will not even listen! What, will it hurt you to listen?”
Matthew had to agree that it would not hurt for him to listen, but he feared to listen. Already he felt himself losing ground, the prospect of safety slipping away as Starkey’s boat had slipped away from the safety of the shore. Yet a terrible curiosity drew him on.
“I will hear it,” he said at length.
Matthew listened skeptically while Joan outlined her plan. She spoke with quiet confidence, waving aside his interruptions and objections. The plan was bold and risky, but he marveled at her ingenuity and conceded at last that the device might work after all. But he forced her to make concessions, too. She was to involve herself in no unnecessary danger, and he was to inform Sir Robert Cecil of their strategem as quickly as possible.
They agreed that Matthew should go quickly to the Bell, from thence to Cecil, and that they should meet at evening. They took leave of each other warmly and then Matthew, groomed and aproned, hoisted the tray to his shoulder, made a wry face at Joan, and vanished into the passageway.
Since it was nearly eight of the morning and most of the inn’s patrons were already about their day’s business, Matthew had little trouble going downstairs unobserved. He hurried past the taproom and slipped into the kitchen where the innkeeper’s daughter was sitting in an open doorway sewing. She didn’t see him approach, she didn’t look up from th
e stitchery in her lap. Matthew backed out of the kitchen cautiously. He would have to leave now through the front door, worse luck. He returned to the taproom whose door let out on the street and looked in to see one of the tapsters behind the bar and two men he didn’t know seated at a table playing cards. Placing the tray on a table at hand, Matthew walked softly across the floor trying not to call attention to himself. He was nearly out the door when he heard the tapster call out behind him.
“Hello! You, boy!”
Matthew broke into a run, burst through the door to the street, and in a moment was mixing with the crowd. Discarding the apron in a convenient alley, he proceeded to the Bell, took a chamber under the name of Miles Merryweather as he and Joan had agreed, and having quieted his agitation with a cup of wine, waited until later in the morning when his luggage was delivered. Then he shaved, dressed in his one remaining suit, and proceeded to Cecil’s office, thinking all the while of just how he was to present his curious story to the Principal Secretary.
Gervase Castell looked out into the dim interior of the shop and was pleased to find it full of customers, although it was near closing time. As he did so, he noticed a plump, dark-complexioned woman peering into one of the display cases. She was well but not elegantly dressed in a green satin gown with a lace collar and a pretty white cap upon her head. Since at the moment she was unattended and Castell was weary of sitting he decided to serve her himself.
She smiled graciously as he approached, and he smiled in return. No, she was no great lady, he discerned, but neither was she mean. He put her down as some merchant’s wife, or perhaps a lady in service. She carried herself well, with an air of self-importance, and what little jewelry she had about her person—a good ring, a chain, and an opal pin to match the green satin—she wore with taste.
“Is it for yourself?” he inquired, looking with her into the glass case.
“No,” replied the woman in a discreet whisper.
“For your husband, perhaps?”
She simpered, looked down shamefacedly.
“For a . . . friend, then?”
“Oh, no!”
Castell grew impatient. Here was a giddy goose indeed. He began to look around for one of his assistants to take her off his hands.
Low Treason Page 15