She regretted, though, that she could not rid the boy of his belief that witchcraft was responsible for two recent deaths. The idea had seized hold of the townsfolk like the shaking sweats of a deadly disease; Bess only endangered herself by attempting to contradict their certainty. But she could not step blithely aside and allow them to harm the old woman.
She’d almost reached the gate when a man called out to her.
“Mistress Ellyott,” he called again.
He walked with great ground-eating strides, the short cloak he’d tied over his broad shoulders—and a silvery doublet—flapping behind him. A tall hat overtopped his black hair, and a groomed beard drew attention to his well-shaped jaw.
“Ah, Mistress Ellyott,” he said once more when he reached her.
“You have me at an advantage, sir, for you know my name but I know not yours.”
He offered a leg. When he straightened, a smile sat on his mouth. “I am Jeffrey Poynard.”
Your identity was past question, truth be told.
“Good morrow, then, Master Poynard.”
“How is Simon?” he asked. “I heard you were called to tend to him.”
“He improves already, for he is strong,” she answered. “I did ply him with a physic, though, to ensure that his recovery continues apace. He should be ready to return to his work by this evening.”
He waved off the suggestion. “Let him rest. I’ll not ask him to rise from his sick bed until necessary. Tomorrow at the earliest.”
“That is most generous of you,” she said. “He is a good lad.”
He grinned, which made his dark eyes sparkle. “But an overcurious one, at times.”
Alarm prickled along Bess’s skin. “I find most servants to be curious about their masters and mistresses. Our lives intrigue them.”
“Are you intriguing, Mistress? I think so,” he said, sending a flush across her skin to displace the prickles of alarm. She knew she was not unhandsome, some might even call her pretty, but she had not the sort of wealth or connections that might attract his interest.
“I am but an herbalist and a healer, Master Poynard. Not in the least intriguing.” Out of the corner of her eye, Bess noticed that the maidservant who had answered the door watched them from the rear porch of the house. Proof of servants’ curiosity.
“Think you so?” he asked. “Your brother speaks well of you.”
“Robert?” He had spoken to Jeffrey Poynard about her? “When he returns from London, I shall chastise him for gossiping about me.”
“He frets over you. I believe it was some matter concerning the murder of your brother-in-law that caused him to fear for your well-being,” he said. “You discovered who the killer was.”
“Nay, ’twas the constable who discovered the killer. And I try to put that event out of my mind, Master Poynard.” However, she had not, to this point, succeeded.
“And now Mistress Ellyn Merrick receives your care,” he said, as though Bess’s involvement in the search for her brother-in-law’s killer and her tending to Ellyn were connected.
“I turn no one away.”
“Ah.” He drew fingertips down the length of his beard, much as Constable Harwoode was inclined to do. The many rings he wore sparkled in the hazy sunlight. “Her illness does astonish me. I spoke with her but a few days past, and she was well at that time. To be stricken so suddenly …”
Bess returned his scrutiny with a bland face. If he did not know about Ellyn’s pregnancy, she’d not reveal it. “I am thankful that I could help her.”
“But then to flee your help … most curious, that.”
Careful, Bess. “Her good reason is muddled by the distress caused by the death of her friend, Master Reade.”
“He was more than a friend to her, Mistress Ellyott,” he said.
“As are you, I have heard,” she blurted out. “Or, I should say, you have hoped to be.”
“Ah, Mistress Ellyott, you are indeed intriguing.” He was smiling again. “Ellyn Merrick and I intend to wed.”
Sourness rose to think of Ellyn tethered to this man who’d have his way. Who’d not called upon her to assure her of his affection and concern for her well-being, yet wished to take her as his wife. Was she but a possession he longed to own, her resistance only serving to make her all the more desirable? Was the portion her father had promised so great an enticement that Ellyn’s disgust for Master Poynard was insufficient to dissuade him?
“I offer you my congratulations, Master Poynard,” said Bess. ’Twas impossible for her to impart any warmth to her words. The sentiment would only be a lie. “However, I beg you to wait to marry until she is well healed and her mind at ease over this recent tragedy.”
“You have my word on it,” he said, offering a bow.
“Though surely Master Reade’s death distresses you as well, sir. When it came at the hand of one of your former retainers,” she said. “You must have been surprised that Goodman Jellis could have committed such a foul crime. Did you have a chance to speak with him to beg an explanation?”
His eyes darkened, as if a heavy cloud had passed over the sun and cast them in shadows. Careful, Bess. Careful. Her query had been too obvious, and she had shown her game.
“I required no explanation, Mistress Ellyott. Jellis was a drunkard and a thief,” he replied smoothly. “I did speak with him, however. To tell him I would pray for him. His foul habits finally brought him the sorrow I always feared they would.”
To pray for him?
“I also have offered to pay for his burial on the morrow,” he added. “His daughter cannot afford the cost of the pitiful ritual a wrongdoer such as he will be allowed to receive.”
“That is most kind of you.”
“You act amazed that I could be kind, Mistress,” he said. “I am aware someone has been witless enough to speak out of turn about me. I advise you to ignore their words. Or, mayhap, to think closely as to why this person casts suspicion on me. ’Tis not because I am the guilty one. Now I bid you good day.”
He inclined his head, turned on his heel, and strode off.
She watched him walk back to the house, the maidservant who’d been spying on them gone from her spot upon the porch. Bess hugged her arms about her body as a sudden blow of wind scattered dust across the courtyard and sent the kitchen’s chimney smoke streaming. She had learned nothing of import from Jeffrey Poynard.
A suspicion occurred to her that he, however, had learned what he’d wanted from her.
* * *
“Ah, here you are, Master Howlett,” said Kit.
He signaled to the alewife to bring a tankard. He’d sent Gibb to confront the churchwarden over his plan to examine Mother Fletcher. Now to confront John Howlett about his dispute with Reade.
Howlett looked up from his tankard as Kit straddled the bench Howlett sat on, facing him. The alehouse window shutters had been let down, indicating the proprietor was serving drink to be enjoyed outside by those who’d no wish or time to crowd inside the cramped single room. An inquisitive townsman, who’d been waiting to be served, leaned through the opening and stared.
“Where else might I be in this benighted town, Constable?” asked John Howlett. He was without cosmetics today and looked to be younger than Kit had previously thought him.
The alewife brought over a pewter tankard and a blackjack of ale, pouring out a quantity before bustling off to her other customers.
“I hope you do not mind if I join you,” said Kit.
“If you come to tell me that Jeffrey Poynard is at last willing to pay us the ten shillings we are owed, Constable Harwoode, then I welcome your company,” he said. “We earn no money by staying in this dismal town full of farmers and dairymen. I wish to be on our way to Bath before our warrant to travel expires. God save us if we are trapped here!”
The inquisitive townsman had been joined by the smith in his heavy leather apron. Where were the prying eyes, Kit wondered, when a man had been murdered?
Rath
er than squeeze against the window to gawp, a handful of farm laborers tromped inside. They plodded over to a set of unoccupied stools, loose floor rushes clinging to their muddy, scuffed boots. A whiff of manure drifted behind them as they walked past Kit and Howlett.
“’Tis not an unpleasant part of Wiltshire, Master Howlett,” Kit said, and swallowed some ale.
“I would expect you to think so, Constable, as you live here,” said Howlett. “And I might agree, were the Poynards willing to offer us another opportunity to perform and earn some money. I have bills. Or, at the least, pay the fee we had already agreed upon.”
“You did not present your play,” said Kit.
“Am I to be blamed for that?” he asked. “’Tis not my fault that Bartholomew Reade got himself stabbed to death. Bah.”
“Ah, yes, about Master Reade …”
Howlett eyed him over the top of his tankard. He set it down. A skim of foam clung to his upper lip. “Why do you and your assistant continue to question me and my men? We have explained where we were the night of Reade’s murder. Willim Dunning found his body. He did not see one of his fellow players murder the man, and he did not kill Reade himself, else he’d not have admitted to finding him,” he said. “Besides, that old sot was accused.”
“An old, frail, harmless sot, Master Howlett. So I remain uncontented and continue to ask questions,” said Kit. “Such as, could it be you are eager to depart this benighted town because you do not want me to conclude you desired to be rid of Bartholomew Reade?”
“I have just explained why I am eager to leave, Constable,” said Howlett. “And I had no cause to be rid of Reade.”
“Did you not?” asked Kit. “What about a quarrel over a play that you wanted from him but which he’d not allow you to perform?”
The expanse of neck above Howlett’s ruff turned red. “A quarrel? That is a lie,” he hissed.
“Is it also a lie that Reade had threatened to contact officials to report that you were putting on plays for which you did not have a license?” Kit asked. “Your days as the leader of a troupe, Master Howlett, would come to an abrupt end if those officials were to find you guilty.”
“Would I murder for that?”
“I know not, Master Howlett,” said Kit. “But it’s easy to imagine—many would agree with me—that you followed Reade to his tryst on that hillock and struck him down. You were gone from the area before Dunning happened upon the body.”
“I did not kill Bartholomew Reade!” He slammed a fist onto the bench, startling the alehouse mongrel, which began to bark from its spot in the corner of the room. The alewife hushed the animal. “If you do not believe that harmless drunk was responsible, why not question the fellow who argued with Reade in the Poynards’ courtyard? Forsooth, they fought most violently over some woman.”
The argument Bess Ellyott had also mentioned. “Perhaps I will question him. Who was he?”
“A clean-shaven man. Short of stature. Plain in appearance,” said Howlett. “Know you such a man?”
“I may, Master Howlett.”
And his name was David Merrick.
CHAPTER 11
“Mother Fletcher?” Bess rapped upon the woman’s rough and unpainted front door, catching a splinter in her ungloved hand.
“Ouch,” she muttered, and plucked the sliver of wood from her knuckle. A drip of blood squeezed from the tiny wound.
She stepped back and squinted for any sign of life. No smoke rose from the opening in the far end of the thatched roof. The lone window on the front of the cob house was shuttered.
Hiking her skirts to slog across the uneven ground, Bess went around the side of the building. The wattle fence that surrounded the messuage was in disrepair, sections completely absent. Bess passed through a gap, stepping over the broken remains of the twigs and branches that had been woven to form the fencing. In the rear yard, a solitary chicken pecked in the dirt. The remnants of an herb garden drooped and rotted in a far corner of the yard. Along the back wall of the cottage, another window was also shuttered, the adjacent door closed tight.
Bess pounded on it anyway. “Mother Fletcher? ’Tis Bess Ellyott. I have come to see how you are.”
She rattled the handle, but the door was latched and locked. With care for more splinters, she leaned an ear against the wood. She heard nothing. Had the woman perished overnight? Was Bess too late to warn her about the danger she faced from the angry townspeople? She could detect no sign that anyone had forced his way into the house and harmed her, though. Perhaps the widow had already fled, having heard of the churchwarden’s intentions and realizing she was no longer safe in this village.
Beware, madam, for one day they may turn on you. As they have turned on me.
Those had been her words to Bess. But to where had she gone, and who might have helped her? For the old woman had no horse or cart by which to travel.
“I pray you are unharmed, Mother Fletcher. Wherever you are,” whispered Bess.
Gathering her skirts once more, Bess trudged back to the lane and headed for the highway. She was but a dozen yards from it when she heard the sound of a horse at full gallop. The rider and his animal charged up the road away from town, the horse’s hooves flinging dirt and stones.
Where, I wonder, is Jeffrey Poynard going in such suspicious haste?
* * *
“Christopher!” cried a female voice.
Kit, who’d been striding across the market square intending to go to the Merricks’, halted. Only one woman, besides his mother, called him by his given name.
He waited for her to join him. “Good day to you, Frances.”
Gibb’s sister hurried over, her sea-green dress, held wide from her hips by a thick bum roll, swaying. No, she did not hurry. Frances never hurried. She took her time to do everything, every action planned with the care of a general going into battle, and that included stopping Kit in the square.
“Come now, Christopher, do not frown at me so.” Leaning past her ruff—dyed a paler shade of the green of her gown—she raised on her toes to kiss him on the cheek. The scent of nutmeg and other sharp spices drifted from the silver pomander slung from her girdle. “You have not come to the house in months. Gibb says you are most busy.”
“My regrets to you and your father, my good uncle, over my absence,” he said. “I only just learned from Gibb you were back from Gloucester, though.”
“You should have come to visit anyway.”
“Gibb isn’t mistaken, Frances. I am busy.”
“And I am your most beloved cousin, whom you should desire to pass away an afternoon with,” she said, smiling winsomely. She was an attractive woman, and after losing her merchant husband to a severe attack of dropsy, Kit had expected her to find a fresh one to replace him. But she seemed content to live in the Harwoode family home with a doting father and equally doting brother. Happy to enjoy the freedom that came with being a widow. Like another widow he knew.
“Has Gibb informed you of my hope you will agree to host a small supper as a welcome for my friend tomorrow?” she asked.
“What?”
“Goodness. He did not, I gather.”
“No, he did not,” he said. “I am too busy, Frances. There has been a murder—”
“Ah, that,” she said. “Father says you waste your time. He thinks you should not meddle in the affairs of the Poynards and the Merricks.”
“Does he now?” asked Kit. “And does he forbid Gibb to assist me?”
“Not as yet,” she answered. “Come now, Christopher, this supper requires almost none of your time or effort. You have Alice to help, do you not? And I shall send one of our servants over to assist her. I would host the gathering at our house, but the damage from our kitchen fire last week has yet to be fully repaired.”
“Alice is no help,” he said bluntly. “She will likely burn down my kitchen while trying to cook some supper of yours, no matter how much assistance she gets from one of your servants.”
“Ther
e is no need for you to be so dramatic,” she said. “And Alice is keen to learn. I rather like her.”
“How much time have you been spending with my servant, Frances?”
“You are not ever at your house when I come by, Christopher, so I speak with her instead.”
And plot. “I repeat, I am too busy to entertain your friend, Frances.”
“Certes, you are none so absorbed in your work as you pretend. I would have her meet all of the family,” she said. “She tires of my company and that of Gibb’s.”
“I can understand being tired of his company.”
She laughed, a sound both gentle and hearty at the same time. He could not dislike Frances. She was indeed his favorite cousin, and he cared for her dearly. As greatly as he would care for a sister, if he had one. He merely wished she did not try to control his life like she controlled all the other male Harwoodes’ lives.
“I have even less time, Frances, if you intend to see me wed to this friend of yours,” he said.
Frances’s eyes widened in a display of false innocence. “Would I wish any of my friends to wed you, Christopher? I pity any woman who would have you. You are changeable and surly.”
“Then why introduce her to me? I sound wretched.”
“Because she might tame you.”
“So you do plan on wedding her to me.”
“You see through my feeble ruse.” She kissed him again, and he thought of another woman he’d once loved long ago and lost. Whose kisses had been equally soft on his face. “I take my leave of you. And do not mistreat Alice so. She means well.”
“I do not mistreat Alice.”
“Pish, Christopher. ’Tis certain you do.” She smiled and strolled off, back the way she’d come.
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that Marcye Johnes had been watching through the windows of the Cross Keys. A different location than was usual for her to spy on the square. Her gaze shifted to a spot behind him, and Kit looked over his shoulder at what had drawn her attention. The answer was exiting All Saints church.
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