The Flame Eater

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  Sysabel glared. “I don’t want to talk about that now.”

  Avice sat down beside her. “Alright. I’ve been thinking about this already. I want to run away again too. So I’m coming with you.”

  Emeline remained at the window. She spoke to the darkening sky outside. “Maman will murder you. She wanted to last time.”

  “No she won’t,” said Avice, “because you won’t tell her.”

  “So she’ll murder me. And there’ll be another corpse to bury.”

  “Then come with us,” whispered Sysabel. “We aren’t babies, really we aren’t and we won’t get lost this time. We’re very grown up, or we wouldn’t be brave enough to do it. Last time wasn’t that bad and nothing terrible happened. I’m going to find Uncle Jerrid and accuse him of killing Peter. And then I’ll find Adrian and show him the proof.”

  “Petronella and Hilda will come,” nodded Avice, “so it won’t be just us alone. Old Bill will come again too, if we pay him.”

  Emeline sighed. “You really think all this running away will help you find murderers?”

  “Nicholas runs away all the time. Running away makes sense when staying feels like being in prison.”

  Avice interrupted. “Emma, you know exactly what I think and how I’ll prove it.” She looked directly at her sister. “Just as I was telling you before about who needs warning and who’s in danger. You really should come with us.”

  “You mean Adrian?” Sysabel sat up straight, her face suddenly white. “You think he’s in danger? Then we have to leave right away.”

  “I never thought the world could be so horrid.” Emeline turned, staring first at Sysabel and then at her sister. “Papa was, well, we know what Papa was. But he made the world feel safe. All we had to do was go to chapel and confess our sins, and then we were happy again with God looking after us.”

  “I never had anything to confess,” sighed Avice. “It was so disappointing.”

  “I only ever confessed that I hadn’t confessed for a whole day.”

  “But now we know Papa had plenty to confess. I wonder if Father Godwin knew everything about that horrible woman all the time.” Avice took a deep breath. “So, are you coming?”

  The pages came in to light the candles and put up the shutters, but once they had left, Emeline was suddenly decisive, marching immediately to the door. “I have to speak to someone and it can’t be Maman. Then I’ll make up my mind. Maybe I will come with you after all. And if Nicholas never forgives me for not behaving like a lady, then I’ll tell him I only did it to try and save his life.”

  Emeline quickly closed the door and hurried along the corridor to the narrow back stairs. It was to a tiny closet chamber that she crept, snugly tucked away on the upper storey. There, amongst half unpacked clothes chests and materials spread for darning, for brushing and for stitching, Martha held her tight, both arms clasping Emeline cushioned to her breast.

  “Did you,” whispered Emeline, feeling once again very young and safe, “know already? Did you really take us to that place on purpose yesterday? Why? To make Sissy admit everything? Or something else?”

  “I knew indeed, my sweetling,” Martha breathed soft and cinnamon, “for that silly young lass Hilda told of it some time back when they first arrived in Wrotham. She’s no more notion of keeping her mouth shut than a magpie singing in the bushes. I took the poor child past that place, thinking I’d a duty to inform you and her ladyship, but with the secret’s not being my own, I wanted to cause neither trouble nor strife.”

  “Do you,” suggested Emeline, voice smothered against her old nurse’s apron, “really feel sorry for Sissy? You don’t, do you?” She sat up a little. “Do you just think it’s all a terrible sin?”

  “Now what would you have me say?” Martha frowned, patting Emeline’s shoulder. “Would you have me give the lie to the almighty Church and all those holy priests, and perhaps say there’s no sin in loving? There’s sin of course, but whose sin is it? The little girl child, who was as ignorant as the dew on the daisies? The poor midwife who does a service for those miserable girls, and saves their wretched bodies from the torment and the shame of bearing a bastard child? Or is it the seducer who bears the sin, a full grown man like as not, who knows and does it all the same, putting his girl at terrible risk without the kindness nor the offer of marriage?”

  “Yes. It was Peter’s sin.” Emeline sat straight now. “How I hate him. First he used her, and then sent her off for the slaughter.”

  Martha clicked her tongue. “And so someone slaughtered him.”

  Emeline sniffed. “Peter told me he’d loved me from afar, told me he’d begged his father to arrange our marriage, told me he dreamed of me every night. It was such a lie. He only wanted me for my money. But I was so infatuated – just like Sissy. He told her he loved only her. But then he got her with child, and sent her off alone to kill it. I’m lucky. It could all have happened to me. Every horrible detail.”

  Martha’s arms bundled her back close. “Don’t cry, my lambkin. You knew no better, and just believed the handsome young man at your door, as all of us do before we learn better.”

  She peeped up at her nurse, suddenly curious, “Were you ever in love, Martha?”

  “With my mother and with my father as is proper, and with you, my own poppet, you and your dearest little sister. My precious children you are both of you, and have never wanted another.”

  “But you don’t like Sysabel, do you?”

  “I might blame her for ignorance and a head full of fluff and nonsense, and even blame her for believing the words of a villain instead of the words of her priest. But stupidity is no sin. I believe the good Lord will forgive, since all the poor lass dreamed of was love and has surely been punished enough. But,” and Martha paused as if waiting for holy intervention before saying, “the girl is – impetuous. A little doom willing, perhaps. And seems unbalanced as a door does when its hinges are broken.”

  Emeline rested her head back on Martha’s swelling apron. It smelled of bleach and starch and honey treats. “Yes, the screaming and wailing and flying into tempers. Or did the misery of it all send her insane? She thinks her greatest punishment was losing Peter.”

  “That was her reward, and God’s mercy.”

  “I cannot imagine what she went through. The fear and the shame and the pain afterwards. And Peter didn’t have to face any of that.”

  “Perhaps the young man had his own demons to face, my lambkin. What do we know of the blackness in any man’s heart?”

  “And the fire? It’s always fire, isn’t it. Did you know that the place you took us – where Sissy had been – was already gone? Burned?”

  “How could I, little dearest? I had never been there and knew only the place Hilda had told me. More tragedy perhaps, more death.” Martha wrapped both arms tighter, keeping Emeline against her bosom. “I took your little sister from your mother’s body,” she murmured, “and washed and swaddled her while the midwife thought your poor Maman might die from the agony of it. But women are stronger than they think themselves. Yet having an unformed babe cut from your body – now that’s a battle wound even worse than the birthing of a living child for there’s the tragedy of loss, and it must be done in secret with no one to give comfort and not even the freedom to scream.”

  It was another voice entirely which answered.

  “Women die every day in childbirth,” announced the baroness from the doorway, and both the other women sat up in a hurry and stared around. The baroness walked into the centre of the little chamber and regarded her daughter with an aggravated frown. “I have no idea why you are here, Emeline, and I find it most inconvenient.”

  Emeline stuck out her chin. “We all come to Martha for comfort and advice. That’s why you’re too, isn’t it, Maman?”

  “Don’t be petulant, Emma,” said her mother. “Whether you need comfort or not, I presume you’ve been talking of young Sysabel. Yes, yes, I know all about her. With a maid who cannot keep he
r mistress’s business in silence – and the Lady Elizabeth looking for a confidante. Indeed, Mistress Frye is in need of a far stricter guardian. And since it seems we now have suspicions regarding Mister Frye –”

  “Well, it makes more sense than poor Edmund Harris. But it’s Avice who thinks Adrian is the murderer. She says it was for Peter’s inheritance.”

  “Nonsense,” said the baroness with a wave of her fingers, “there were far better reasons for murdering Peter than that.”

  Emeline hiccupped and disengaged herself again from her nurse’s embrace. “Does everyone know things they never told me? Are you suggesting you knew what a dreadful creature Peter was, while continuing with my marriage arrangements regardless?”

  “Really Emeline, don’t be absurd.” The baroness waved away imaginary cobwebs. “You know how impossible it was to change your Papa’s mind about anything. But I assure you, I had my own plans and would have put matters right.”

  “So why are you here, Maman?”

  The baroness sank suddenly to the little chair beside the settle where Emeline and Martha sat. It held a pile of her own stockings ready for darning, but the baroness accommodated herself on top. She said, “The same, my dear, the same. Looking for common sense amongst the knots and muddles. Needing a little comfort, and a good deal of advice. Thinking of killings and widowhood, of unwanted marriage and the cruelty of man.”

  “And of pain,” whispered Emeline, “and degradation. And pitying poor little Sissy even if I’m not sure I like her either.”

  Martha’s voice faded to a little murmured tickle over the top of Emeline’s curls. “There’s few girls would choose such pain, but with a babe on the way and no husband to give it a name, pain is the only choice. An experienced woman will give herbs first, a mixture of acid and sweet, and all stirred in ale over the fire. But if that does not bring a result –” Emeline cringed, curling back again further into Martha’s embrace, “then there’s penny royal, hyssop and rue, and maybe, if she knows her business, there’ll be marigold, tansy and ivy, a pinch of mandrake root perhaps, and white poplar for the pain. If the girl has good money to pay, there may be a spoonful of treacle and even syrup of poppy. But whatever is paid, there’s no surety, and with enough poison in her belly to vomit the day through, the babe in her womb may still hang on to life, poor mite, and not knowing its mother wants it dead.”

  “That’s – what happened – to Sissy?”

  Martha frowned. “Now, what a question to ask me, my sweetling, knowing I wasn’t there and have never spoken to Mistress Sysabel on any subject, let alone that one. But we can be sure it was something of the same, and in the end it must have worked.”

  “You are speaking only of herbs, Martha,” sighed the baroness. “But it can be far worse than that.”

  “Truly, my lambkins, not just herbs. For if they work, then there’s the grinding and the pulling and the pain inside like to die or split apart. Then there’s the bleeding and the weeping, the dragging on the back as though breaking, and the punching within the belly as though all the innards are screaming. And still it may not work, and there’s the poor lass lying with her knees to her belly, and the inner fire burning her up, and the vile taste of what she has to drink, and all the effort not to spew it back. Then, if still nothing has washed the sin away and the poor unborn creature lives on, its tiny innocent fingers clutching onto hope, then there’s the knife. In the end, it’s the knife, like as not.”

  The baroness looked down into her lap. “Poor young girls. Poor children.”

  “Cutting up into her womb with her and the child screaming both. Then she has to crawl all the way home, poor lass, trying to hide the pain and the bleeding for she’ll be cast out if the secret leaks – with the priests watching and holding up their crosses all ready to call her a wicked whore, and her wretched mother and father with the whip ready – and her weeping for months afterwards for the loss of what she’s killed, and the dreams of how she might have loved her own tiny baby if it had lived, and, bitter in shame and regret, fearing what the Lord God will say to her when she dies herself.”

  “Martha –?”

  “And after the knife scrapes the womb empty, it stays empty forever. No babe can grow in a womb where the knife has gone before,” Martha said, sitting up with a deep breath. “But no more questions, my sweet lambkin. Your poor daft nurse has spoken enough of what she knows nothing about, and will say no more. Just to offer – a word perhaps – to give sympathy to those who have suffered these things, and not to condemn your poor little friend for what I doubt she could help and will never forget.”

  “I’m glad someone murdered Peter.” Emeline looked across at her mother. “So who do we think killed him now? Adrian?”

  The baroness was still staring into her lap, and spoke softly. “Yes, Adrian. Or this unknown Uncle Jerrid. It could even have been Sysabel herself.”

  “To murder Peter, yes. But not Papa.”

  “How many are there with a motive to rid the world of both?”

  Martha sat quietly now, nodding as if she knew, but could not say. Emeline stood, staring back at both women. She felt suddenly quite cold. “So, tell me.”

  The baroness looked up. “I have discounted young Edmund, and certainly the unknown boy cannot be considered any longer. I had a moment’s suspicion of his lordship, your father-in-law. Absurd, of course. But who else?”

  “Just Adrian.”

  The baroness stared at her daughter. “Or Nicholas.”

  Emeline stared back. “Or you,” she said.

  They left that night.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The tavern buzzed, boots slipping in spilled ale as the doors continually swung open, slammed shut, opened and shut again. The whistle of the coastal wind, wood against plaster, the sudden shiver, then shut in warmth again. Voices, laughter, the topple of a body and the quick fingers of a cut purse, the candlelight catching the polish of chipped earthenware, and the grasp of clammy hands, torn fingernails and palms grimed with the day’s toil. The fallen tallow and the stale crumbs from two days’ suppers, the jangle of coins, each penny cut into its farthings, a man’s wage buying a pot of beer and a smile from a friend before he staggered home for his supper, or simply a hungry belly and a lonely bed.

  Nicholas looked into the shadows and said, “So you know this?”

  “Not for sure,” said the other man. “But he never made it to the boarder. When he didn’t come, I crossed through into France myself, but never rode as far as Paris. When I doubled back from Flanders, I thought I’d find him already heading to Brittany. But when there was still no sign, I caught the next boat.”

  Jerrid nodded. “So Dorset failed again.”

  “Poor bugger. Desperate to defect from Tudor’s little group of traitors, yet cannot make his escape.”

  The small man lowered his voice. “But Spudge confirms his lordship got the message. Not regarding his brother and half his family were caught in conspiracy and executed, now he’s taken his mother’s word and wants back home. Took his mother’s letter – confirmed he’d be making a second attempt – asked to be met and wanted an armed escort. But he’s well watched, he says, has been warned, and feels the danger of it. Knows Tudor doesn’t trust him anymore. Nor does France.”

  “France doesn’t trust anyone. It’s French policy.”

  “Nor can anyone trust France,” David muttered. “That’s policy too.”

  “When he failed to get away last November, the bloody French laughed as they took him hostage. It’ll be worse for him this time.”

  Jerrid nodded. “That French boy king’s too ambitious for his years, and his sister regent is too damned clever, too damned sour, and has wed a wolf.”

  “Bugger France,” objected Nicholas, “I’m only interested in England’s monarchy, and keeping it safe. Will Dorset keep trying? Or does he now admit defeat?”

  “He’ll try again,” said the small man. “Given a year or so, perhaps he’ll manage event
ually. Spudge tells me his lordship’s miserable, squashed between the elbows of Tudor and French ambition. And he wants his Maman.”

  Jerrid groaned. “All right. We’ll give him another week.”

  They sat, five men facing each other, Nicholas, Jerrid, David, and the two strangers, boots to the bench opposite, faces obscured by intention, by shadow, and by their cups. The tavern was crowded but few took notice of those deep in private conversation. Cursing in French, Breton, Cornish, Kentish and Flemish, port slang and the crudities of men long at sea. Drunken men speak loud, and curse louder. Dialect and language were interwoven with shadow and the inevitable shifting layers of coastal smells; driftwood and crusted weed, damp brambles and windswept reeds, old oyster shells scattered underfoot, fish scales basted to boot and cape, stale beer, rancid cheese, warm sweat, bad breath, unwashed bodies and the great overwhelming swell of ocean brine. As the door rattled, was pushed open and kicked shut, so the wind carried its stories and its chill, while the men squeezed further into the tavern and clutched their cups.

  “And Urswick?”

  “That part of the business is now over. Urswick himself got away,” Nicholas said softly. “But his letter did not. I have the pouch inside my doublet, and my knuckles still itch from the bristles on the messenger’s chin. The wretch himself I let free since I’d not enough men to arrest and hold him. Two of his companions are dead.”

  “I’ll take the news straight to my Lord Brampton,” said the small man. “Will I take the pouch as well?”

  “No,” Jerrid said. “My nephew and I will take the letter to Westminster and the king ourselves. You should return to Brittany. If Dorset makes another attempt to escape from France, he’ll need all the help you can offer.”

  “I will, my lord. And the letter – if you’ve seen it – is as expected?”

  Nicholas sighed. “It is. From Tudor to my Lord of Northumberland, asking for backing and recommendation in the matter of marriage. The king will not be pleased.”