The Widows Guild: A Francis Bacon Mystery (The Francis Bacon Mystery Series Book 3)

by Anna Castle

  He pounded him on the head while Pratt turned in circles, shouting, “Get off me, you poxy swine!” Pratt struck at Tom’s legs, pulling on them so Tom couldn’t get free. He kicked his heels against the man’s padded doublet with no effect. He pounded on the knave’s shoulders and tugged at his ears, making him yowl, but not bringing him down. They were at an impasse unless Tom could steer him under the iron bar again to pull himself off.

  Trumpet, once free, did not run away — unlike most girls, some boys, and one or two men Tom could name. Not the Earl Corsair’s dauntless daughter. She turned back to her assailant and drove her knee hard up into his egg sack. When Pratt doubled over with a howl, Tom slid off his shoulders. He caught Trumpet’s hand and they raced down the alley, shouts rising behind them.

  They ran as fast as they could on the rubbish-strewn cobblestones. When the alley took a sharp curve, they spotted an impassable obstacle and had to bang into a wall to stop themselves. A large donkey stood tethered to a post chomping straw from a barrow, blocking the whole passage. He rolled his eyes at them and twitched his ears but kept eating as if he hadn’t been fed for days and didn’t know when he might get so rich a meal again.

  “Clarady! Stop right there!” Buckle’s deep voice echoed off the plaster walls.

  Tom and Trumpet looked at each other and shrugged. They took a few steps back to get a good start and then ran forward. Tom vaulted over the donkey while Trumpet slid under. He reached down a hand to help her up and their eyes met. She grinned and nodded. He grinned back. Two minds that thought as one.

  She loosed the donkey’s tether while Tom swacked it on the backside and gave it a good shove. The beast jolted toward their pursuers, piteous brays emerging from its mouth while balls of shit dropped out the other end. He picked up speed, knocking Coddington down as he came around the curve. Buckle skidded on the slippery shit but didn’t fall. He had his knife drawn, ready to cut or throw.

  Tom and Trumpet ran. The alley curved again and then opened onto a wider street. Water shimmered at the end of the lane — the Old Swan Stairs and safety. Neither donkeys nor thieves blocked their path; just one small figure in a long cloak walking down toward the river.

  Buckle shouted, “I’ll chase you to hell and leave you there, Thomas Clarady! No quarter for spies!”

  Tom threw a glance over his shoulder as he ran. The man was only a few yards behind. He picked up speed and crashed right into Trumpet, who had stopped altogether for no good reason. They tumbled down in a tangle of arms and legs.

  “I’ve got you now, Clarady, you sneaking whoreson!” Buckle reached them as Tom struggled to his knees. He reached for his knife and twisted to face his attacker, only to see Buckle’s eyes widen in horror. “A demon! Save yourselves!” Buckle staggered, caught himself with a hand on Tom’s shoulder, turned, and ran the other way.

  Tom made it to his feet and was nearly knocked down again by Trumpet, walking backward, a weird keening sound issuing from her lips.

  He looked over her shoulder and gasped. There at the end of the lane, standing between them and the safety of the river, stood a dreadful figure, short but solid, as swarthy as a man burnt by the fires of hell. His eyes shone black as ravens’ wings and his black cloak billowed behind him. His legs were clad in long canvas slops striped in red and white. Shark’s teeth hung from his ears and a curved knife hung from his belt.

  He stared at them, then stalked toward them, raising one arm to point straight at Tom’s heart. “You are Clarady!”

  Tom screamed, “It knows my name!” He flung Trumpet over his shoulder and ran past the frightful apparition, down to the Old Swan Stairs. A wherry had pulled up to let a passenger off. Tom shoved past him and tossed Trumpet into the boat, clambering in to sit beside the startled wherryman. Tom wrapped his hands around the oar on his side and shouted, “Row, man! Row!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Tom and Trumpet were halfway up the stairs to Tom’s rooms at Gray’s Inn before they remembered that she shouldn’t be there, especially not dressed as a young rogue. Too late. They were as likely to be seen going out again as they had been coming in and besides, they needed a safe haven. She could hide inside until dusk.

  “We’re in for a scolding,” Trumpet warned as they mounted the last of the four flights of stairs. “Ben will not be happy to see me.”

  “I’m less afraid of Ben than I am of that — what was that thing?”

  They hurried each other through the door and locked it behind them. Ben looked up from his desk, blinked twice, and started in. “She mustn’t be here! What are you thinking? Why is she dressed like that?”

  “Relax, camarade,” Tom said. “We have good reasons. But give us a minute.” They stood inside the door, catching their breaths.

  Trumpet looked around the study chamber with her hands on her hips. “It’s tidier than it was when I lived here.”

  These rooms on the fourth floor of the building behind the kitchens used to belong to her uncle. Trumpet had lived in them, sleeping in a trundle bed and dressing behind a screen, during her year at Gray’s. Tom lodged with Ben for his first term in rooms across the yard. Welbeck had departed abruptly right before Christmas, leaving Trumpet alone. When Tom went to Cambridge, Ben had moved in with her. Recognizing that her legal education must come to an end, she’d left Gray’s at the end of Easter term. When Tom returned from Cambridge, he moved into these chambers with Ben. Full circle.

  “We have the cleaners in three times a week,” Ben said. “Neither you nor I could afford it.” His words were pleasant enough, but his leveled gaze made it clear he was still waiting for an explanation.

  “Anything to drink?” Trumpet asked. “I feel like my throat has been scoured with sand.”

  “All that screaming,” Tom said, grinning.

  “That was mostly you.”

  Trumpet pushed aside a stack of clean linens and hopped onto the narrow bed against the inner wall, stretching her feet out with a sigh. Tom found three cups that looked clean enough and filled them from a small cask. He handed them around and then took his usual chair behind his own desk, which stood back-to-back with Ben’s in front of the windows.

  Ben asked, “Are you going to tell me, or do I have to guess?”

  Tom and Trumpet traded considering looks. “How much can we tell him?” Tom asked.

  “I would tell him everything,” Trumpet said, “but I’m not sure —”

  Ben’s eyes and mouth turned down, his expression mournful. “Not sure of what? When did you two stop trusting me?”

  “We trust you,” they cried together. Trumpet added, “Mostly.”

  Tom said, “We stopped telling you everything when you started passing things on to Bacon. He’s my tutor, Ben. I have to be able to keep things from him sometimes, or the whole student-teacher relationship collapses.”

  Ben did not appear to agree fully with that proposition.

  “Besides,” Trumpet said, “every time we see you, you scold us about being friends. We’re tired of it, old chum. Surely you can understand that.”

  “I only have your best interests . . . All right. I’ll stop. Or I’ll try. And I won’t tell Francis anything without your permission unless —” He held up a stern finger. “Unless I sincerely believe your health or well-being is at risk.”

  “Fair enough,” Tom said.

  Trumpet raised a cup and they sealed the new bargain with a drink.

  “Now,” Ben said, “will you kindly tell me what’s happened?”

  They told him the whole story, beginning with the pawnshop in Southwark and moving right on to their visit to Nathaniel Welbeck at the Savoy. While Trumpet told that part of the story, Tom admired the lawyerly way Ben managed to listen in silence, giving her his full attention. He sat with an elbow on his desk, his cheek resting on his thumb with his index finger across his mouth. It probably helped to block the urge to raise objections.

  Tom picked up the tale at their meeting in Duke Humphrey’s Walk. When h
e got to the end, where the demon had blocked the lane, Ben’s eyes popped. “God preserve us! Who was it?”

  “Or what,” Trumpet said. “Could it be a demon, do you think?"

  Tom shrugged. "What else could it be? It came out of nowhere.”

  "It can’t have been a demon,” Ben said. “Fiends from hell do not stalk about London on a Thursday afternoon. There'd have been a whole crowd of people, including churchmen. Maybe even the bishop." He waved his hands. “No, I cannot countenance that idea. I won’t tell Francis, but I can imagine what he would say. The fellow was probably a sailor. Didn’t you say he was wearing an earring and striped pantaloons?”

  “Yes,” Tom said. He considered that possibility. “Ships do pick up all manner of men.”

  "It could have been a Moor," Trumpet said. "Or a Turk. Did you see how black it was?"

  "I don't think Turks are black," Ben said. "And don't they all wear those little red hats?"

  "Whoever he was," Tom said, "why did he know my name?"

  “If he’s a sailor, he might know your father,” Ben suggested. “He might —”

  Three loud knocks on the door were followed by the voice of the under-butler. “Mr. Clarady? You have a visitor.”

  “No,” Trumpet said. “It can’t be.”

  The three friends exchanged a round of wary glances. Tom’s stomach clenched; he knew what waited outside the door.

  Trumpet got up and slipped into the bedchamber, pulling the door almost shut. Ben went to answer the door, opening it wide. There on the poorly lit landing stood the under-butler, the gatekeeper, and the demon.

  He looked less terrifying in this context. His black cloak fell in quiet folds, hiding the curved knife. He looked even shorter than before, his head barely reaching the shoulders of the under-butler, who was nowise a giant. He gazed around the room as if he’d never seen such an unusual abode. When he turned his head, he displayed a nose as hard and angular as the blade of an axe.

  He gave Ben a brief inspection and then turned his gaze to Tom. He removed his cap and bowed from the waist. Then he said, “I come with news of your father.”

  Tom didn’t rise; his body had become too heavy all of sudden. He nodded, meaning to say, “Come in,” but his throat wouldn’t work. News delivered by demons could never be good.

  Ben ushered the small man inside and closed the door, leaving the under-butler and the gatekeeper out. He moved the spare chair into place before the two desks and offered the demon a cup of beer. Then he returned to his own seat. Trumpet came out and returned to her spot on the bed.

  “Gracias,” the demon said. He drank all of it and set the cup on the edge of Ben’s desk. He looked at Tom, his dark eyes unreadable. “I am Dirimara Montoya de la Torre. I am a sailor on the ship of the great Captain Valentine Clarady.” He smiled and a gold tooth glinted in his brown teeth. “Or I was, until Sunday.”

  Tom took a breath. “What happened on Sunday, Mr., ah, Tohray?”

  “Dirimara,” the demon said. “I am not a master.” He began to speak in a voice thickly accented with Spanish and some other language with a musical quality. The Susannah — the ship named after Tom’s mother — had sailed out of the Thames last week and gone across the British Sea to Dieppe, where the captain hoped to pick up supplies and news. They had spent three days there. The captain managed to find a supplier with many barrels of gunpowder who would accept a promissory note in partial payment.

  “That was lucky,” Tom said.

  “The supplier was Jacques Le Bon,” Dirimara said.

  The captain’s old rival. “Not so lucky,” Tom said as his heart froze.

  Trumpet whispered, “Oh, no.” Ben folded his hand around his mouth and shook his head.

  Dirimara nodded once and went on with his tale. The powder had been loaded onto the Susannah, along with water, biscuit, and other necessaries. The wind changed and the sky cleared. The captain said they would sail on Sunday after dinner. He left the boatswain in charge and took Dirimara into town for a good meal. When they finished, they walked to the wharf, but the master gunner told them that the boatswain had gone to say good-bye to his wife.

  Tom knew the man. He had a second wife in Weymouth and a third in St. Jean de Luz. The boatswain believed in holy matrimony but found the usual rules too restrictive for a man who traveled for a living.

  Captain Clarady had sent Dirimara back into town to roust the boatswain. Then he stepped into the ship’s boat waiting at the wharf. That was the last time Dirimara saw him. He found the boatswain in his wife’s cottage and hurried him back as quickly as he could, but they were too late. Or perhaps some god had chosen to spare him.

  They had almost reached the wharf when the Susannah exploded with a resounding boom and a flash of fire. More explosions followed, columns of flame rising in a row, revealing where the barrels of gunpowder had been stowed. Smoke billowed skyward, engulfing the ship.

  Dirimara and the boatswain reached the wharf, now crowded with horrified onlookers, screaming and pointing. They pushed through to the wharf and found the wharfman staring wide-eyed at the disaster, pulling at his hair with both hands.

  “The captain?” Dirimara had asked, but the man could only shake his head and stare.

  No one could tell him anything. Two other ships pulled out of the harbor, anxious to avoid the wreckage. Dirimara and the boatswain spent hours roving up and down the wharf, meeting the few sailors who had managed to reach the shore. They all agreed that the captain had been in his cabin, studying his charts. Powder had been stored beneath it. He would have gone up in the first blast.

  Dirimara had gazed blankly out the window throughout the telling of his tale. Now he turned his eyes to Tom, who met them, peering into their obsidian depths. A bond formed between them; a sense of mutual loss, and something harder.

  The Indian had described the explosion as an accident, but Tom knew that Jacques Le Bon lay behind it; why, he couldn’t yet imagine. Let the others believe it was an accident for now. He had no desire to debate the matter.

  First, he would grieve. He could feel sorrow welling up from his heart and knew it would soon overcome him. But someday — not soon — he would track down Jacques Le Bon and kill him, slowly. As he stared into the unfathomable black eyes of the strange messenger, he knew the Indian would gladly join him in that quest.

  Tears flowed into Tom’s eyes now, and he let his head sink onto his folded arms. Sobs rose, shaking him from the core. Trumpet rose and came to stand behind him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and laying her head on his.

  Silence fell. Nothing remained to be said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Francis Bacon passed a cluster of barristers standing in the yard with their heads together, chattering excitedly about some scandal. The news spread quickly from one man to the next, but he had no desire to learn what it was. He had fresh troubles of his own.

  He had just concluded a distressing interview with the widow of Sir James Lambert, who had been murdered in his bed sometime Tuesday night, or perhaps early Wednesday morning. Lady Lambert had been visiting her daughter in Essex and come home to find her husband quite cold, laid out as if asleep on his back, with a small cross cut into his chest. She had summoned the sheriff, who had sent her to Francis. Lady Lambert was rightfully outraged and had relieved her feelings to Francis at some length.

  Furthermore, while the lady admitted that she and her husband preferred the old religion — although she hoped they loved their queen as much as Francis did himself — they did not maintain a private chapel in their house in Hackney. They had sometimes worshipped with friends — years ago, she hastily added — and otherwise made do with a temporary adjustment to her husband’s study. Nothing had been stolen from the house except for the rosary Sir James kept under his pillow. It had belonged to his grandmother and was very valuable.

  Francis had expressed his sympathies and promised to do what he could, recognizing with a sinking heart the futility of his attempt to e
vade the responsibility the widows had placed upon his shoulders. “Murder will out,” he murmured to himself as he climbed the stairs to Ben’s chambers. And this one’s ousting had fallen to him.

  He knocked once on the door and opened it. “Ben, you will not believe what has happened . . .” Both words and feet came to a halt as he took in the scene inside the room. Ben sat behind his desk, as expected, in his usual seat. But his expression was that of a man who’d just experienced a terrible shock. Tom also sat at his desk, but with his head buried in his arms. He didn’t bother to look up. A young man stood next to him, clasping his shoulders, his cheek pressed into the top of Tom’s head. The man raised his face, revealing brilliant green eyes. Trumpet.

  She shouldn’t be here, nor should she — the reproach vanished as Francis noticed the fourth person in the room: a small hawk-nosed man with a braid of blue-black hair hanging to his waist. The reddish tinge of his brown skin reminded Francis of the Indians Ralegh had brought from Virginia in 1585 to meet the queen.

  “Come in, Francis,” Ben said. He raised his eyebrows at Trumpet, who nodded. “You might as well hear it from the source. The news will be all over Gray’s by now anyway. I’m sure the gatekeeper and the under-butler stopped to listen at the door.”

  Ben introduced him to the stranger, who was indeed an Indian of the New World, with the lyrical name of Dirimara.

  The Indian rose, bowed, and offered him his chair. Francis took it, feeling as if he’d stumbled into a dream. He listened to the appalling story of Captain Clarady’s demise with a growing sense of futility. When hostilities between nations grew hot enough to flare into open conflict, the flames licked far and wide, sparking up again weeks later to destroy another cherished life. This senseless accident would never have occurred if King Philip had kept his armada in his own harbors. Now Tom had lost a father and England a gallant captain. When would it end?

  At some point during the retelling, Tom raised his head to watch the storyteller. Trumpet remained at his side throughout with one hand on his shoulder. When the tale was told, Francis struggled to find words to express his sympathy. He understood the enormity of Tom’s loss from his own painful experience. He’d lost his father nearly ten years ago; now that grief returned as sharp and bitter as if no time had elapsed.