by Neal Roberts
“Thank you, Master Ames. I was going to volunteer for that privilege, but I really should be attending to pressing matters.”
Noah and Goodwife Rodriguez leave Jonathan’s room together, treading the same creaky floorboards they traversed on their way in, and return to the vestibule. Noah carefully removes each of her wet things from the pegs on which he hung them, and assays their dampness.
“Well, they’re a bit better than before,” he says. “Shall we try them out?”
Goodwife Rodriguez nods, and dons her cape. Feeling the dampness in her hat, however, she peers outdoors, apparently weighing whether to put it on. A few rays of sun have struggled through the overcast, and it is no longer raining. She carries the hat in her hand.
Noah extends his arm, which she gratefully accepts. They pass Mountjoy’s Inn, which Henry earlier identified as Lopez’s residence. It’s a new three-story building constructed in the fashionable style of the day. Window boxes have been added to the exterior as a welcoming touch, but nothing flowers there in winter.
They turn right onto High Holborn, and walk past several conjoined houses, all in very good condition, with well-maintained lawns. To Noah, the neighborhood confers a feeling of steadfast financial security, while avoiding the ostentation visible in the wealthiest areas of London.
“Have you family, Master Ames?”
“Oh, please call me ‘Noah.’ ‘Master Ames’ is generally reserved for people in the process of dressing me down for one reason or another.” He purses his lips and puckers up his face, imitating a stodgy man twice his age. In as pinched a voice as he can muster, he says: “‘Can you provide the Court with one good reason you should not be held in contempt,’” he looks at her bug-eyed, “‘… Master Ames?’”
She laughs despite herself.
“Well, I shall be careful to avoid addressing you as ‘Master Ames,’ at least until you deserve it. In turn, you must call me ‘Marie.’” She reframes her former question. “Have you any family, Noah?”
He sighs wistfully. “I have a grown daughter. She is … let’s see … twenty-four years old now, married.”
“Has she a name?”
“Who?”
“Your daughter.”
“She has.”
Apparently unsure what to make of this reticence, the widow moves to another topic. “Have you a wife?”
“No,” he shakes his head sadly. “I did, but she left us some years ago.”
“She has passed?”
He nods.
“I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“As am I for yours.” He is touched that this woman, so recently widowed herself, is moved to console him for a loss suffered at such a remote time.
They walk down another seven or eight doors, and turn onto a cul-de-sac dominated by one large free-standing house on the right. “This is it,” she announces.
Surprised, he beholds her house in daylight for the first time. For some reason, he finds it difficult to believe that this is the same house at which the hearse dropped her off only the previous evening. He realizes now that he has been so entranced by her appearance, her voice, her sheer presence, that he’s quite lost track of the nearness of her house to his own lodgings at Gray’s Inn.
“Would you like to come in for a moment? I must forewarn you that my children are all here, to lend comfort.”
“Perhaps another time. I expect they will not take kindly to meeting a strange man at a time such as this. There is a natural closing-in of the family upon such occasions.”
The door opens, and a handsome young man of about twenty sticks his head out. “Mother, Uncle Horace has arrived, and wishes to speak with you.”
She smiles at Noah. “I’d better go,” she says, her gloved hand grazing his. She turns to the stairs, and her demeanor changes at once. “Uncle Horace, eh?” she pronounces gruffly, lifting her skirts up off the pavement and staunchly climbing the stairs to the entrance. She strides straight into the house past the young man, who nods respectfully to Noah and quietly closes the door. Noah is glad not to be Uncle Horace.
On his way back to Gray’s Inn, he spots the man he suspects of being a spy for Anthony Bacon standing by the same oak on the square. No longer wearing riding clothes, he is now expensively dressed, and is looking in the same general direction as this morning.
As Noah passes within fifty feet of the man, a few things occur to him. First, the man is not looking at him, in fact seems heedless of his presence, making no attempt to conceal himself. Second, the man stands only fifty feet or so from Anthony Bacon’s window at Gray’s Inn, but the object of his interest, which is now somewhere behind Noah, would not be visible from Bacon’s window, which might explain why he is standing outside, instead of peering out from the relative comfort of Bacon’s apartment.
If the man knows of Noah’s bludgeoning, surely he would have taken precautions to conceal himself, and would have been startled to find himself discovered by Noah. Instead, he seems completely oblivious. Nevertheless, Noah cannot entirely discount the possibility that this man and the assailant are involved in different spokes of the same conspiracy.
Preoccupied with these uneasy thoughts, he goes inside and climbs the stairs to his room. As he empties his pockets, he comes across the papers he removed from his saddlebag, and places them face down on the desk. Turning away, something about the papers catches his eye, causing him to turn back at once.
At first he has to squint to see it, but there, at the bottom of the unused side of the last sheet, in a tiny, unfamiliar handwriting, are two words in Latin. He checks the rest of the papers, confirming his recollection that the scribe wrote on only one side of each sheet. Indeed, the small inscription is the only writing to appear on the reverse side of any sheet. And he is certain it was not there when he packed the papers in his saddlebag this morning. No, this writing was applied by the assailant, either before or after the assault.
Caveat causidicus, reads the tiny inscription. He silently translates.
Let the lawyer beware!
He grabs the papers and flies down the stairs, where he’s relieved to find Jonathan’s door open and the young man still at his desk. In his urgency, Noah knocks louder than intended, which startles his young friend, whose initial annoyance drops away immediately upon seeing Noah’s expression.
“Good Lord!” Jonathan exclaims. “You look as though you’ve fled a ghost!”
Noah closes the door behind him and assumes his accustomed chair, breathing heavily, sweat forming on his brow. “I must speak with you at once.”
Jonathan is amazed, and quietly alarmed. “Catch your breath,” he says. “I trust the inn is not on fire.”
“No,” says Noah, unsure how to begin. “You know I attended the autopsy at Creechurch earlier today?”
Jonathan nods.
“Well, I haven’t yet told you what happened afterwards in the churchyard, after the widow left in her carriage and Henry Neville rode away.”
“What happened?”
“I was bludgeoned into unconsciousness.”
“Ah, yes!” he exclaims, rising from his chair. “I don’t know what to say! I thought there was something amiss with you during the interview. You seemed very ill at ease.”
Noah relates the facts of the assault to Jonathan. “And, when I returned here to the inn, before surrendering my mount I pocketed the papers that were in the saddlebag. Just now, I was removing them from my pocket, when I noticed an inscription on the back of one of the pages that was not there when I packed them this morning.” He hands the papers to Jonathan, pointing out the inscription. “Take a look!”
Jonathan holds the inscription close to his face. “Caveat causidicus,” he reads aloud, and looks gravely at Noah. “And you’re quite sure nothing was taken? No papers, no money?” Noah shakes his head. “And the assailant deliberately broke your fall?” Noah nods. “Most curious!” There is a moment of silence while Jonathan stares out of the window, gathering his thoughts. �
��What do you think?” Jonathan asks.
“I think someone is warding me away from representing the widow in investigating her husband’s murder. The irony is that I have no intention of representing her.”
With trepidation, Jonathan says, “No, but I have.”
“Yes,” says Noah. “And you are likewise causidicus. Indeed, the inn is full of causidici.” Noah accepts the papers back. “The more I contemplate this inscription, the more I believe it to have been carefully drafted. The warning might have been crafted to address only me, for example, if it had simply said ‘caveat.’ But instead it is directed more generally to an unnamed lawyer, presumably any lawyer who accepts to represent the widow in this matter. And by characterizing the object of the warning as a lawyer, the inscription implies that the person being warned is not the client. So the client may be safe. Or more precisely, the assailant wants us to think so.”
“Us?”
“Jonathan, there is no reason to think that this inscription is not equally directed at you, and there can be little question that you are in as much danger as I!”
“But why should this case be more dangerous than another?”
Noah equivocates a moment, then makes up his mind. “I have no choice but to tell you something which must remain a secret from all others for the time being. Are you prepared?”
Jonathan’s expression is both confused and grim. “Quite.”
“When the Earl of Essex told the constable that he saw the murder, he was lying!”
“Why do you suspect he was lying?”
“I don’t suspect it. I know it to be true. So does Henry Neville. When the fight broke out, we were walking past the theater door where Essex would eventually exit. Essex’s page was standing across that very doorway with one hand on his golden hilt. Essex hadn’t yet emerged. In fact, he was in a windowless area of the theater at the time of the murder, and so could not have seen it.”
Jonathan is amazed. “But that means … that Essex knew the murder would take place, and that he approved of it … and was prepared to lie to cover it up.”
Noah and Jonathan agree that, although it still seems possible for the widow to drop the investigation entirely for her personal safety (to say nothing of Noah’s and Jonathan’s), there can be no assurance that her doing so will render her or her investigators any safer. To the contrary, Essex’s mere suspicion of an ongoing investigation might make her a target for murder, which seems especially plausible given that Stephen’s murder might have been committed to cut off the mere possibility of his releasing confidential information.
Furthermore, even if dropping the investigation were to result in the widow’s perfect safety (which there’s no way to know), she’s made clear that she’s simply not prepared to give up without a fight.
If Essex were of neither note nor name, of course, they could simply interrogate him, but that would not be possible with an earl, especially one who is also a military hero, to say nothing of a member of the Privy Council, and, worst of all, the Queen’s favorite.
Although in theory Queen’s Bench, the ancient court entrusted with trial of serious crimes, draws no distinction among Englishmen, in actual practice the gap between its treatment of someone of Essex’s stature and an ordinary English subject is an unbridgeable chasm.
Noah and Jonathan agree that there is simply no way of avoiding the established technique for investigating a peer of the Crown, which is from the bottom up. Yet, to employ this method, they need to identify Essex’s complicit underlings and, at this point, they know of none.
“From now on,” says Noah, “I want all of us to exercise the utmost care. The inn is probably safe for now. As far as I know, even Henry the Eighth did not violate the sanctity of the Inns of Court. But the widow is another story. Jonathan, first thing tomorrow morning, I want you personally to warn her and her footman that she may be in danger from the same possible conspiracy that resulted in her husband’s murder, and that neither she nor her children must ever be alone without an adult male escort, discreetly armed. If at any time her male servant must leave her side, please make sure you have someone at the ready to take his place. Needless to say, you are to make no mention of Essex.” He scratches his head. “Who’s your best man for the job?”
“Graves,” replies Jonathan without hesitation. “He’s the smartest by far, and plenty rough in a pinch.” He smiles. “He’s much more than an investigator. He’s like family to me. Been with me twenty years, and I wouldn’t want to count how many meals I’ve eaten when he was too careful to let me know there wasn’t enough for two.”
“Sounds like you’re quite fond of him, but are you equally sure of his skills?”
“Have no fear,” replies Jonathan. “He’s the best. But to put your mind at ease, I’ll have an additional man at the ready to back him up, if need be.”
Noah nods grimly.
“What’s wrong?” asks Jonathan. “That ought to be enough to provide us all with some peace of mind. No?”
Noah considers the question for a moment, and replies darkly.
“As much peace of mind as one can find sitting on a powder keg.”
Chapter 6
ALTHOUGH JONATHAN IMMEDIATELY appointed his best man, Graves, to track down the murderer of Stephen Rodriguez, four weeks later the investigation has failed to progress. The trail, if there ever was one, has grown cold, as though the nameless assailant appeared out of nowhere, committed his heinous crime, and escaped to the nowhere from whence he’d come. Of necessity, Jonathan and Noah have shifted their attention to other cases.
Now, on a Wednesday morning, they sit at defense table in a large oak-appointed courtroom at Westminster Hall devoted exclusively to serious crimes, awaiting resumption of the Crown’s case in a murder trial at Queen’s Bench. Noah can tell by the slant of the sun’s rays that the judge is already tardy in assuming the bench, no doubt because Crown Prosecutor Edward Coke will be late and has so advised the Court.
“Coke is cooking up a witness,” he says to Jonathan. “If I’m right, this could be an interesting morning for our side.” Jonathan smiles in return, but says nothing.
Jonathan has become a regular second chair to Noah, and the arrangement has worked well for them both. Noah’s practical skills are supported by Jonathan’s legal acumen, but even more so by the quality of his preparation, which far surpasses that of any solicitor (or barrister) Noah has encountered. For Jonathan’s part, he’s learning how to win a case at court, a skill that can somehow elude even the best law student for an entire career.
“There’s company,” says Jonathan, glancing up at the spectators’ gallery. “And evidently, we’re the entertainment.”
Searching through his papers, Noah asks, “Anyone interesting?”
“Doesn’t look that way.” Jonathan sighs wistfully. “Too bad this is not the theater, where one of the gods might appear ‘out of the machine’ to assist us in solving the Rodriguez case.”
Noah smirks, and glances up at the gallery. “Deus ex machina? Oh, never seek for that! For when a god makes a personal appearance, he does so strictly for his own purposes. The hero is never more than a pawn to the gods, and quite often ends up dead.”
“Cheery this morning, are we?”
Except in the most sensational cases, the spectators’ gallery, which could easily hold fifty, remains vacant. This morning, there are twenty people there. At least three are sound asleep. Periodically, an old man wakes with a start from the sound of his own snort, eyes darting about suspiciously, as though someone may be having him on by dropping a heavy book whenever he dozes off. Among the remaining spectators are at least two rustic men in Sunday-best raiment (probably friends of the victim), one veiled widow, and four important-looking gentlemen occupying varying degrees of lesser nobility. Some spectators are indistinctly dressed, members of the common public often referred to as the “great unwashed.”
Seven of the spectators, all wide awake, are young barristers who have
come to watch Noah practice the art for which he has become best known throughout the Inns of Court, namely, cross-examination.
The interest of the young barristers in the spectators’ gallery has been further piqued by knowledge that the Crown is being represented by Coke, who, if rumor is any guide, is about to be appointed Solicitor General for England and Wales. Most fun of all is promised by his reputation for showing the greatest disdain for his every adversary, as though any client of the great Edward Coke obviously deserves to prevail, so that anything accomplished by his adversary cannot possibly amount to more than an antic, a mere dilatory bump in the road to Coke’s inevitable victory.
Coke’s main weakness, surprising for a barrister so expert in trial procedure, is that he’s extraordinarily thin-skinned. On the few occasions when he’s faced Noah in the courtroom, Noah has got the better of him by engaging in understated ridicule, a practice coming naturally to Noah, and for which Coke provides the perfect foil. Although the younger barristers have insisted that it is Noah’s principal object to send Coke into a red-faced fit, which nearly always happens, Noah has denied it, claiming that he is simply doing everything he can do within the bounds of the law to enhance the likelihood of acquittal. As Noah would explain it, Coke’s predictable paroxysms of choler are just a side benefit.
In this trial, Noah’s client, Jack Granger, is a grain exporter accused of murdering a complete stranger with a cudgel on a wheat field near the Granger home, just before harvest this past September. Unbeknownst to Noah and Jonathan, however, because Granger has persuaded several former Walsingham agents to decline enlistment in Essex’s spy network, Essex is determined to have Granger’s head on a platter — and intends to use this trial as the means to obtain it.
Yesterday’s proceedings consisted of testimony by the local constable concerning the finding of the body, and by the coroner concerning the manner and time of death and the degree of pain likely suffered by the victim. Thus far, the Crown has called no witness placing the accused at the scene of the crime and, based upon the sequence of Crown witnesses so far, Noah strongly suspects that Coke can produce no credible witness to bear that burden.