She paused, turning to her husband. Seeing the confusion in his face, she was about to make another effort to explain when Cecil asked who this Keable was and what deception she spoke of. She answered, then continued with her own line of thought, somehow addressing both men at once. “The name Prideaux was the key, just as I supposed from the first. Naturally I thought Prideaux was a man, for the others were. ’ ’
“Yes, the apothecary of Norwich,” Matthew interrupted.
“Not him, but his wife” Joan said.
“His wife?”
She spoke quickly, trying to control her impatience. There was so much to explain, to clarify—in her own mind as well as in the minds of her husband and especially Cecil, who knew so few of the details.
“Prideaux had a wife,” she said, as much to herself as to either of her companions.
“He did,” Matthew answered. “Never heard of again.”
“I put it to you, for mere argument’s sake, that she lived, came to London, a fugitive—a fugitive with revenge in her heart for wrongs she believed done to her husband. There was a dead child as well—and another mighty cause for vengeance, for it is an ill mother who will not fight tooth and claw against those who take her child or cause him hurt.”
“Imagined,” Matthew said guardedly. “And so proceed.”
She warmed to her theme. “Well, suppose she conveys her husband’s art to another apothecary—who then puts his skill to an illicit purpose, gulling his victims of their money by making them mere slaves to this . . . this elixir, this hope of earthly Heaven. Leyland’s alchemy must have had a part in it. What better field for mischief than the Inns of Court, a crop of ninnies with more money than brains? What better victims than lawyers, for whom doubtless she has nothing but hatred and contempt? What better accomplice than an impoverished physician-alchemist, who comes and goes freely in the Inns, plying two trades, honest medicine and subtle fraud?”
But Matthew was not entirely persuaded; Joan could see it in his eyes. Was his resistance masculine stubbornness, or had she overlooked some contradictory detail? She glanced at Cecil; he seemed more receptive. She directed herself to him, believing that only the whole story would convince her cautious husband or the dignified knight.
“But say,” she continued, “the pious Giles became a member of the laudanum ring—by design or happenstance. Remember that his sister had been a victim too. Remember that he knew Prideaux and wife by sight, having been present at the trial.”
“And recognizing the wife, he put her true name on the memorandum—Prideaux,” Matthew said.
“Yes, her husband’s name.”
“Because she was disguised as a man—to gain admission to the Temple. Keable saw her back only and was taken in by her disguise, but Giles saw her face to face, knew her for the woman she was.”
“But it was really Mistress Prideaux,” Cecil put in.
“You don’t mean Mistress Browne?” Matthew asked.
“Prideaux was a young man, not above thirty, by all accounts,’’ Joan continued. ‘‘The broadside in Giles’s chamber said his wife was fair to look upon and of good family. None of this fits Mistress Browne, an ill-speaking woman in her fifties if a day.”
“Alice, then?”
“Not Alice,” Joan said, and then she paused. She held back the tears of betrayed friendship, the humiliation of admitting that she who prided herself on her ability to tell an honest heart from a fraud had failed so miserably in this instance. Then she said it; it was to this end that her persuasions had led. “Not Alice, Matthew, but Nan Warren. She who rescued me and first put into my mind the trick of disguising myself as a man. She who once told me she had been in London five years, who speaks like a gentlewoman and is Leyland’s bedfellow and accomplice. She who in all her discourse to me never once asked after a child of mine, as though the subject was distasteful—or too painful to endure. Nan Warren is, or was, Prideaux’s wife.”
For a moment Matthew made no reply to her theory. Then he nodded slowly and looked at Cecil, who nodded back. So Joan had persuaded them both. But her victory brought her little joy. Within she felt a vast desolation of spirit, an emptiness more profound than grief.
She was grateful that Matthew spared her any of his scolding. Instead, he took her hand in his and held it gently. No, he would not censure her, and at that moment she loved him more than she had ever done; her eyes welled with tears.
Cecil asked if they would find this woman Joan referred to in Leyland’s company, and she said they probably would. And then they rode in silence until minutes later they jolted to a stop, the horses all lathered and wheezing and Joan flung forward practically into Cecil’s lap for the suddenness.
“Now I shall give you both all the proof you require,” Joan said. “You shall see that every word I have spoken is true.”
Matthew advised Joan to wait in the coach until the conspirators were taken, but she insisted on accompanying the men. What danger was there with such a multitude to seize but two? She wanted more than anything to confront Nan, to fling the girl’s false professions of loyalty and gratitude and love in her face. To proclaim her the fraud she was. But in her haste, Joan stumbled as she stepped down from the coach and nearly broke her ankle, while already the troop behind had dismounted and were preparing to advance the hundred or so paces to the apothecary’s shop.
Although the upper parts of the house were dark, a dim light could be seen in the street, and after half the distance had been gained, Joan saw there was a horse and cart in front of the shop door with a lantern hanging from its side. The cart was already loaded with barrels and crates, and at the very moment two men were coming down from the upper story of the house lugging a big chest. Both were short, thick men, shabbily dressed.
Until this moment, Cecil and his troop had been advancing silently upon the apothecary’s. Now they rushed forward to surround the workmen, with Cecil shouting out for them to stand where they were in the Queen’s name.
The laborer in front dropped his end of the chest in surprise, but the other held on and flung a curse in Cecil’s direction. Before the knight could respond, Ley land appeared in the doorway. Apparently grasping what was going on, he darted in again, slamming the door behind him. “There’s Leyland,” Matthew cried.
About half the men rushed forward to seize the laborers, and the other half followed Matthew and Cecil in an effort to break in the door that Leyland had evidently bolted from the inside.
The storming of the house was quickly accomplished. The door gave way after but a few onslaughts by Cecil’s men, who used nothing but their shoulders in the effort. Joan followed the men up the stairs. When she reached the top, the door to Leyland’s study was already open, and she could see upon entering herself that the physician had been taken, with two officers on each arm and Matthew trying to wrench something from Leyland’s right hand. Three of the officers who had gone to search the opposite chamber now returned to report that it was empty, nor was there any sign of a woman ever having occupied it. Cecil asked Joan to provide his men with a description of Nan Warren, which Joan was glad to do, and then about a dozen of the officers were dispatched to search the immediate neighborhood, for Cecil said it was likely she was nearby.
The whole company now went downstairs, where they were met by what seemed half of the neighborhood all come outdoors to see what the uproar was about. Among these was Mistress Browne. Still dressed in her nightclothes and cap despite the bitter cold, she was demanding to know who had invaded her house and under what pretext. When she saw it was her son who had been arrested, her fury intensified and she so abused the officers who held her son with foul language that Cecil ordered she be bound and gagged herself.
While this was happening, Matthew demanded that Ley-land tell him where Nan Warren was, but Leyland said he would see him and the officers in Hell first before he would say another word. This remark incited several of the officers to fall upon the prisoner and begin beating him until Cecil’
s orders called them off, and a bloodied Leyland said that they could beat him all they willed, for he had taken a draft that would prevent him from feeling aught but pleasure and would presently say farewell and be damned to the whole world and all the damned souls upon it.
Cecil ordered Leyland to be taken away to his coach, and his mother too, and then turned his attention to the two laborers who were being held close prisoner by Cecil’s coachman. Joan listened as the one who had cursed Cecil explained in a fearful voice that he and his brother—the other laborer— were honest men and that he had not realized who Cecil was or that his men were officers but supposed them common thieves. He said that he had been hired by a woman of the neighborhood—Nan Warren, by his description—to transport the goods in his cart to a house in Wapping. He said she had offered to pay them extra for doing the work by night and gave them no reason she should want it so but that she feared her valuables inside would be stolen otherwise.
By this time many of the barrels and crates in the cart had been removed and were being examined by Cecil’s men. They contained, as Joan surmised, equipment from Ley-land’s study, his books and manuscripts, and a number of personal articles, man’s and woman’s. “Ah,” Matthew said, seeing the female clothing. “This proves Nan Warren intended to flee with her accomplice. ”
“Was the woman in the house when you arrived? ’ ’ Matthew asked the brothers.
The first of the men, who up until now had let his brother do all the talking, answered that she was not. He said there was only her servant.
“Servant?” Joan interjected. “But Nan had none.”
The laborer said that there was indeed a servant—a dark skinned young man, amiable and smooth-faced . . . perhaps a Spaniard or Portuguese. “It was he who let us in and told us what to take and where.”
“I think they’re lying, the both of them,” Matthew said. “No one was upstairs but Leyland.”
At this the other brother wrestled free of the officer who held him and dashed into the darkness, and in the confusion of orders and pistol shots that followed, his brother bolted in the opposite direction. Matthew joined Cecil and the officers who had not been sent to search for Nan Warren in pursuing the two men, leaving Joan in front of the shop with only the curious neighbors for company.
Joan had not been as skeptical of the laborers’ story as Matthew had, and she now wondered who the servant might have been. One possibility, of course, was Hodge, yet to be captured. But Hodge did not begin to fit the description the men had given, nor could a disguise have done anything to make the burly and bearded barkeep smooth-faced or youthful.
Having no torch, Joan took the cart’s lantern to guide her and went upstairs to Nan’s rooms. They were as she remembered them, but devoid of any personal possessions that had been Nan’s. She opened the little wardrobe and found it empty. Except for the boot marks recently made by Cecil’s troop, there was no sign of recent occupation. Yet despite all the evidence of abandonment, Joan felt she was not alone. Remembering the priest’s hole Nan had showed her, she went to the adjoining room and, setting her lantern on the floor, kneeled down to pull aside the cloth that concealed the recess.
The sight of a crouched figure in the hole made her start, but seeing the swarthy stranger’s face, she knew at once it was both servant and mistress. “Nan?”
Nan looked as though she had seen a ghost, and Joan realized that to Nan, a ghost was what Joan now appeared to be. “I’m no spirit, but a living woman,” Joan said, hoping to draw Nan out and talk with her before Cecil and his men returned. Strangely, given what she now knew, she had no fear of the huddled figure who seemed so vulnerable and innocuous in her hiding place.
“Won’t you come out?” Joan asked.
Nan crawled from the hole and stood before her. She was much changed in appearance. It was not only her garb, but her expression, which, beneath the veneer of stain and false black hair, had lost every trace of the feminine and been replaced by grim resolve and masculine hardness.
“So you are alive,” Nan said after a moment. She even reached out and touched Joan’s shoulder. Then Nan sighed heavily and sat down near the hearth. She stared at Joan blankly.
“Yes, despite the best efforts of Master Leyland—and you.”
Joan’s measured response was not the response she had intended when she first realized how thoroughly she had been fooled and betrayed by Nan. The fullness of her anger and resentment did not come; instead, she found herself simply curious. What had Nan wanted of her? What lay behind such evil machinations to wreak destruction and confusion among men who, for all their faults, seemed not mighty sinners but merely wayward youths?
Joan’s calm invited a similar tone in Nan. She spoke slowly, as though she were suddenly past caring. “I suppose it will do no good to ask you to forgive. I never hated you, Joan, but loved you, rather—as close a friend as I have had since my husband was taken. You were good, and generous to a fault. But you proved too zealous in your husband’s cause. You learned too much . . . there was too much at stake.”
“So he was your husband, Prideaux, I mean.”
“Yes.”
“He was a scoundrel, by all accounts—a cheat and deceiver.”
Nan’s eyes flashed angrily at these words, and suddenly Joan was reminded of the woman who had risked her own safety to save her. Nan said: “Christopher Prideaux was a great and learned man who dispensed medicine to idiots.”
Joan said: “He begat a child on one of his patients—on another woman. He was an adulterer. How can you defend him?”
‘‘Lies, all lies,” Nan cried, rising with such suddenness that Joan’s heart leaped into her throat. “Inventions of the girl’s family, who wanted to hide the fact she had been undone by some groom or perhaps the girl’s pasty-faced brother.”
“You mean Hugh Giles.”
“A skulking traitor.”
“You poisoned him.”
Nan seemed hardly to take notice of Joan’s sudden accusation. Her face was implacable in its hatred. She spoke as one possessed.
“I gave him no less than he deserved, for he came among us as a friend, and was a spy after all.”
Afraid of what her accusations had unleashed, Joan decided to temporize. “Juries sometimes err. Reputable families have been known to resort to shifts—lay blame elsewhere to avoid it themselves.”
“By God, they have,” Nan declared. “Her father was a subtle lawyer of Norwich. As for myself, I was run out of town like the vilest of criminals. My child—” And here Nan’s voice broke; her face contorted as though a sword had been driven into her bosom. “My child, stillborn. I had my husband’s books and a smattering of his knowledge, for he treated me with the respect one man has for another and not as an inferior creature without brain or will. I came to London, where, having neither friend nor money, I faced starvation.”
“And became—”
“Whore, doxy, Guinea bird, name me what you will.”
Tears filled Nan’s eyes; she spoke with great bitterness. It did not seem to Joan self-pity, but something more noble. It was passing strange: Nan had tried to kill her—her and Matthew. She had killed God knew how many others, Hugh Giles by her own admission. At her orders Theophilus Phipps and poor wretched Alice had been drowned. And yet Joan felt a great swelling of compassion.
“There are a hundred names for what I was and am, and none is very pretty,” Nan continued. “Nonetheless, such a life kept my bones together, until rage and proximity to the Inns of Court and lawyerly arrogance and greed, already my downfall, taught me that triumph was sweeter than mere survival.”
“You made and sold laudanum—at a tidy profit.”
“Nothing unlawful in that.”
“At exorbitant prices; the men became obsessed with pleasure.”
Nan laughed. “Ah, men! I learned quickly what men were made of—the four elements and a concupiscent soul. Even the lawyers who think so much of themselves. I knew well from my husband’s practi
ce the effects of laudanum, knew it could do more than ease pain but also deliver such an ecstasy that, once enjoyed, the enjoyer would not soon forgo the experience. I became a queen of pleasure, satisfying every sense. I created a ring of worshipers, all convinced that laudanum was as good as the philosopher’s stone to bring infinite happiness.”
“But you saved my life,” Joan said.
Nan turned and walked to the window. She looked out into the night, although surely she could see nothing but her own reflection in the glass. “I had no enmity toward you, another woman. At first you were merely a victim of men’s wrath, like myself. Naturally I took your part, helped as I could. When I realized it was your husband who had been sent to the Middle Temple, it served my purposes to maintain our friendship, nor was your generosity unappreciated.”
Joan said; “Tell me, then, what I have been ignorant of from the first. I can understand your hatred for Hugh Giles, the son of your worst enemy. And Phipps and Alice. Each knew too much. But what of Litchfield and Monk? And Braithwaite? What reason for such a massacre of youth and promise? Were they all murdered because they were lawyers and you hated every one?”
Nan turned from the window, a subtle smile on her lips.
“They were gulled because they were lawyers—and because they had more greed than justice or common sense. The ancient Knights Templar were often accused of being sorcerers by their enemies, of whom there were many. An old legend had them possessors of the magisterium, or philosopher’s stone. You can’t believe how little it took to persuade our dupes that we had somehow come upon old writings in which all the means of concocting the stone were plainly set forth. We represented the laudanum as the first fruits of our prospective riches. It was not only laudanum that took them to paradise, but the thought of fabulous wealth.”
Joan said: ‘‘Well and good, but my question remains unanswered.”
‘‘Really? You disappoint me, Joan. Isn’t it obvious? We had laudanum, but we had no stone or magisterium but in our heads. Alchemy is no simple matter. All the world knows as much. There’s costly ingredients, tools, equipment. None comes cheap. Laudanum and its delights was mere earnest money for the rest.”
Knaves Templar Page 24