Knaves Templar

by Leonard Tourney

  “Which you used for your own purposes.”

  Nan nodded. “Now you understand the game.”

  “They couldn’t live on promises forever,” Joan said. “Sooner or later something more was needed, something more than pleasant dreams.”

  “Litchfield was first to break ranks. He was the most zealous disciple in the beginning, but he would not stay for the long-promised conclusion. He wanted his money back, threatened to tell all.”

  “And so his own chamberfellow killed him.”

  “On my suggestion—and for a greater share of the profits. You see how greed triumphs over friendship?”

  “And made the death appear to be suicide.”

  “Monk’s idea. Ingenious, wasn’t it?”

  Joan couldn’t resist remarking that it was a transparent device after all. Even Hutton had suspected the truth. “You hanged Monk and scrawled upon the wall to make his death seem to be by his own hand. ”

  “Monk killed himself,” Nan said. “He was a timid soul at last, for he could not face what he had done. Place the blame on a repentant spirit. Had he been devoid of conscience, he would still be alive—and possessed of what his friends are now bereft of.”

  “But no richer.”

  “Alive, at least.”

  “You claim to be innocent of both deaths, then?” “Completely,” Nan said. “For I never told Monk what to do. Murder sprang from his own brain. I only had to tempt him with a larger share. Of course, I also mentioned how dangerous to our enterprise Litchfield’s loose mouth might become.”

  “What of Giles?” Joan asked. “Surely you recognized him from Norwich?”

  “As a matter of fact, I did not. Monk brought him in. I didn’t think to connect the names. But he recognized me— from my husband’s trial—and then threatened to expose us all after Monk and Litchfield were dead. I sneaked into the Temple as I had often done, dressed as you see now, a whore’s trick. I adulterated his drink with enough laudanum to send him leaping into paradise. And so he did and our secret safe.”

  “And Braithwaite?”

  “His wounding was not in the reckoning,” Nan continued, seeming almost pleased to have Joan for an audience. “Yet it worked to my advantage. By that time we had milked our calves dry, and he, the last remaining, was at the point of sheer distraction—all his fellows dead under sinister circumstances and as ready to blab out our secrets as to make water after dinner. Yet he was glad to see me the night I stole into his chamber. I told him the elixir had been achieved that very day, and that as sole survivor of our society, he should take all shares save mine and Leyland’s. His last thoughts were of lucre. I gave him his laudanum, inducing such a state of lassitude that smothering him with his own pillow cost no more effort than to press down hard. ”

  “On that same night you nearly killed my husband,” Joan said accusingly.

  “He and Phipps interrupted me before I took my leave. I didn’t mean to hurt your husband. I didn’t know whom I struck. Besides, the wound was a trifling thing. I inflicted it only to prevent his foflowing me.”

  Joan thought of the horrible dungeon beneath the Gull, the frigid river, the desperate escape. “You tried to murder me as well.”

  Nan hesitated before answering Joan’s new charge; she cast her eyes down. “It was necessary. I had no choice.”

  ‘‘You had a choice, ’ ’ Joan declared with conviction. ‘‘You could have made an honest life, forgiven those who had wronged you. I gave you a chance.”

  ‘‘It was too late then—and later now. Besides, I’m not sure I would have taken it, this honest life you speak of. London hasn’t been that bad for me. Gulling the lawyers gave me considerable satisfaction. After a while killing them caused me no more grief than squashing an obnoxious fly. I would have gulled and killed twice the number if I had a chance.’’ For several moments the two women, both dressed as men, stared at each other as though the other’s very existence was incomprehensible. Whatever love and friendship Joan had felt for Nan, whatever compassion for her loss, was now vanquished in these cold-blooded confessions of fraud and murder. Never had Joan felt so betrayed. What a fool she had been to allow her generous impulses to blind her to the truth. She said: “You have revealed all these things with wondrous candor. Aren’t you afraid I’ll tell all to my husband—and he to the authorities?”

  Nan laughed. “Should you relate to another what I have told you, I will deny it. There are no witnesses against me. It will be your word against mine. ’’

  “We shall see,” said Joan.

  Joan turned to leave; as she did, she glanced toward the hearth. There stood a pair of andirons she had not remembered, and they were in the shape of lions’ heads. Remembering her dream of the threatening blackamoor, she swiveled around to face Nan.

  Nan was clutching a dagger; her face was twisted in malice. “You won’t tell anyone what I’ve told you.”

  Joan dodged the flashing blade, swinging the lantern at her adversary. She screamed, “Help-ho murder!” uncertain if any help was within hearing. Nan advanced for a second lunge while Joan kept swinging the lamp.

  “You won’t escape . . . you won’t,’’ Nan said between clenched teeth, looking determined and merciless.

  Her heart in her throat for fear, Joan backed slowly into the adjoining room, keeping her eyes fixed on Nan, who wielded the dagger with the skill of a tavern brawler and was only inches beyond arm’s reach. Nan moved swiftly to put herself between the door and Joan. Joan darted behind the bed. Then she screamed for help again, louder this time.

  ‘‘It’s useless. Your husband and the knight are gone, ’’ Nan said. “There’s only the two of us now, and soon there shall be but one.”

  Suddenly from below there was a sound of men’s voices and heavy footsteps on the stairs. Out of the comer of her eye Joan was aware of the door opening, and in the next second, as Nan made a second quick thrust, Joan was neatly deafened by a thunderous explosion.

  Through the haze of gunpowder, Joan saw Nan jerk violently and then fall forward on the bed, where her body continued to convulse for a few seconds as though it were possessed by a demon.

  Joan felt herself losing consciousness. She slumped to the floor and the next thing she knew, Matthew was looking down at her, her head was resting on his knee, and he was calling for someone to bring water to douse her with.

  “Joan, Joan. Are you hurt?”

  Her nostrils were filled with the acrid odor of gunpowder. She heard Cecil’s voice giving orders and other men shouting and a thunder of footsteps. Her lamp lay beside her, its light extinguished. There were torches lighting the room now. “Help me up, Matthew. What’s happened?”

  “No, stay where you are.”

  She got up under her own power, saying she was all right, not hurt, only bruised. It was the second time in one night she had narrowly escaped death. Was there to be a third?

  While Matthew berated himself for leaving her unprotected, Joan looked around her. Cecil’s coachman stood in the doorway, smoking pistol in hand. He was trembling and explaining to Cecil that he had never killed a man before and that it made him sick to think on it.

  “You’ve saved my wife’s life,” Matthew said.

  Cecil assured the coachman he had done the right thing and took the pistol out of the man’s shaking hand. He walked over to look at the body on the bed. “So there was a manservant after all.”

  “No man, but a woman bom,” Joan said. “Although perhaps female devil is a better word. See for yourself, sir.”

  When a cursory inspection of Nan’s body proved Joan’s words true, the coachman, who had remained in the doorway, cried out that he was damned for having killed a woman, even if it was in defense of another. To console him, Joan went over to assure him that without his timely firing, she would be a dead woman herself at that moment. He had taken a life and saved another.

  “And a better,” Cecil added. “Am I right in assuming that this thing on the bed is Leyland’s accomp
lice, Nan Warren?”

  “More than his accomplice,” Joan said firmly. “His inspiration, his guide. She confessed. Her part and its reasons are all now as plain as day, and when convenient I’ll report every word.”

  “And we shall gladly hear all,” Cecil said. “As for now, let her body be removed from this place, and we too shall go. It is very late, and Master Hutton will be beside himself to know how all has turned out.”

  As Joan and Matthew were leaving, Matthew paused to look at the dead woman. The final convulsions of the body had caused the wig to rest askew, and beneath the false black hair of the Spaniard appeared the yellow strands of Nan’s own true hair.

  “So this was the Nan Warren you spoke so glowingly of. ”

  There was no mockery in Matthew’s voice. He made the statement as a fact, and indeed it was a fact Joan could not deny.

  “I thought you said she was fair to look upon. Death and discovery of her wrongs have made her most hideous.”

  Joan wanted to tell him just how hideous Nan had been during the minutes before her death, while her full lips were twisted in scorn and hatred and while all her discourse was a record of such cold-hearted malice that Joan could hardly believe one of her own sex capable of it. But that was a part of the tale she would reserve for later. For now, she wanted only to leave the presence of the bloody corpse, for somehow she imagined at any moment Nan would spring to life again, seize the dagger, and finish the evil work of silencing Joan’s testimony against her.

  ‘‘She was fair,” Joan said as they passed out the door and started down the stairs. ‘‘But only to the outward eye. My judgment was too readily blinded—by friendship, kindness, and trust. Such emotions that she was beyond feeling.”

  ‘‘Because she was wronged,” he suggested. They had reached the street. All quiet now.

  “That doesn’t explain it, Matthew. Many in this world are wronged and are well satisfied to let God avenge them. It was more.”

  She was glad he didn’t ask him what more it was as he helped her into Cecil’s coach, for she herself could not say. Therewas the great mystery.

  She heard Cecil give the coachman directions to Cooke House. He said there was no point in their returning to the Middle Temple, not tonight. Then Cecil climbed in and the coach moved forward.

  “I was gulled, just like the others,” Joan said, directing the remark to both men in the coach, and expecting no answer from either.

  But Matthew answered. “They were taken in by greed, their false ambitions and lust for power. You were betrayed by love, no fall from grace. Nan Warren had you there.”

  “She said she loved me well,” Joan said simply, feeling a terrible grief swell up in her.

  “And so perhaps she did, Joan,” said Cecil, leaning forward and taking Joan’s hands in his. “Don’t be ashamed of love, Joan. It’s the purest thing we know, and another’s treason cannot sully it. In the Judgment it will shine forth in such splendor as to hide a multitude of sins. Believe me, it is so.”

  Matthew said he believed the same, and Joan felt comforted.

  Leonard Tourney

  Is The Author,

  Mathew Stock

  Is The Investigator,

  and Elizabethan Mysteries

  Are Their Forte.