“Ladies, ladies. You shouldn’t quarrel like this. It wrinkles you.” Benjamin smiled at Margaret, and she simpered.
One hand went into her hair, twisting a curl. “I’m not one for distempers,” she said. “I’ve ever been a woman who prefers quiet.”
“I’ve known you to talk loudly enough,” said Catherine. She rolled up her sleeves and wiped the table clean. “You’re only quiet when someone requires sober judgment.”
“You hear how she upbraids me! It is like living with a harpy for a sister.” Margaret put her face into her hands and her shoulders heaved. “Connie! I need you.” The maid emerged from the pantry. Constance had grown to look even more like Margaret, though the roll she carried about her middle made her grotesque in the tight bodice. She had something in her hand, which she shoved into a pocket.
“I haven’t seen to the stabling of my horse,” said Benjamin. “I will leave you women to yourselves. What time will we dine?”
“You men,” Margaret teased. She gave Benjamin a dainty whack on the chest. “Do you think only of your appetites?”
“What else is there?” He opened the back door and Eleanor ducked in under his arm. Then he went out whistling.
“I found radishes and onions,” said Eleanor. “Some strawberries still good. The greens are as stiff as boards and they’ve got bugs. There’s still mint growing along the south edge of the house.” Eleanor emptied her large apron, and Catherine began sorting. “Will this cure a fever, Madam?”
“It will make him stronger. The fever may have to run its own course. These maladies are like the sun, sometimes, Eleanor, breathing hot for a while, then cooling in their age.”
Eleanor gathered the strawberries into a bowl and poured water over them. “And they return like the August heat, then?”
Catherine trimmed the onions and put the mint to soak. “Sometimes. A man’s life is very like the turning of the year, and once a man is burned, the heat can lie dormant in him, deep underground in his body.”
“What is this? A lesson?” asked Margaret.
“It is conversation,” said Catherine. “Something you practice too little.” She set the mint aside and helped Eleanor hull the berries. “We will slice these and flavor them with tarragon, if I can find some. Let me take this mint up.”
“He will refuse you,” said Margaret, “after the way you have treated me. And I have treated you as a sister. Con and I have taken the best care of him we can. He knows to trust us.”
Catherine poured the infusion into a pitcher. “He knows better than that. And so do you. If he refuses me, he will die.”
40
William was sleeping when Catherine tiptoed into the chamber. Reg retired with a nod and she poured a drink before setting the pitcher away from his thrashing arms. “Wake up. This will cool you.” She shook his shoulder, and William opened his eyes. They were fiery pits in his swollen face.
“Is that you? Catherine?”
“You see me here. Sit up. Come, let me help.” She held his head while he swallowed, then let him fall back onto the pillows. “Now go back to sleep.”
“I am a wicked husband.”
“No, you’re a sick husband. Don’t tax your mind. It will keep the fever burning in your head.”
“I have done you wrong. A grave wrong.”
“We all do wrong, William. You may correct anything you have started. Rest now and I will come back before supper. Do you think you can eat?”
He shook his head, leaving damp streaks on the linen, and she covered him. She drew the draperies, glancing out to see Benjamin in the yard below, running one hand down his stallion’s back leg. He did not look up, and she finished darkening the room before she went out. Margaret was right outside the door, and she reeled backward when Catherine opened it.
“Have you turned servant, Margaret?” Catherine whispered. “Listening at keyholes should be your maid’s trick.”
“My office is to care for my brother.” She crossed her arms.
“It will heal him mightily to know that you’re sniffing at his door.”
Margaret’s tone smoothed into conciliation. “He is still feverish?”
Catherine nodded. “Let him sleep. I need to go out.”
“What about supper?”
“I will set Eleanor and the kitchen girls on it. Marry, Margaret, where is all of the food?” She headed for the stairs, and the other woman followed.
“There is meat and there is wine. What have you given my brother? Will it improve him?”
“I pray so.” Catherine stopped at the front door and checked her purse. Only a penny. There was ready money in William’s chest in the gallery, and she grabbed a handful of coins.
“Where are you going?”
“I will return shortly.”
“Is Benjamin going with you? Is he going to get you a place with the king? Have they made you take the oath of succession? You need to put a leash on your need to roam before it puts a halter around your neck.”
Catherine snapped, “Do you dare to speak that way to me?”
She started out the door, and Margaret called, “William was my brother before he was your husband. This house was my home before you ever saw it.” But Catherine kept walking.
She was halfway to the village when she heard the rider behind her. She stepped over to the verge, head down and napkin over her nose. The horse stopped beside her, though, and when the dust settled, she uncovered her face. Of course it was Benjamin. “Do you never take no for an answer?”
“Not when I see a lady in distress,” he said, leaping down and bowing. “I wish I had lived in the times of the knights errant. The damsels wanted their gallants in the old stories. But now the weather has shifted and we men are all in the way.” He cocked his head at her and motioned at the saddle. “Will you ride?”
Catherine stepped backward and almost lost her balance in the weeds. “I am going to the constable. I will not be seen in the village sitting behind you.”
“How does it look for you to walk in coated with dirt? I will walk like a manservant beside you, if you please, and you shall ride in upon my Caesar like the lady of the manor that you are.” He did his silly bow again, and Catherine snorted out a laugh before she could stop herself. Then he added, “But why are you going to the constable? Do you think he will intervene in this divorce business?”
“He may not have heard about it. I will not mention it to him.” Catherine tightened her lips. She did not move toward the horse, which was clopping with one great hoof at the road bed and stirring up the dust again. “But I must know about my women. William is too ill to pursue the matter. Margaret is too . . . too--”
“Foolish? Shrewish?”
“Don’t say that. She is William’s sister.”
“Oho, the family loyalty rears its head. Get on the horse, Catherine, like the angel you are, and I will walk down here on the earth in my mortal manhood. Come on, I won’t bite your ankle.” He held out his hand. The day was growing hot, and her legs were tired. The road lay before her like a long pale scar and she no longer wanted to walk. She sighed and let him help her onto the stallion. Caesar gave her a white-eyed look over his shoulder and tensed as though he would bolt, but Benjamin jerked his reins and he settled into a resentful walk. Catherine searched behind her for Overton House, whose highest windows barely showed above the trees. They were surely too far away for anyone to see them.
41
“Your husband’s birds are neglected badly,” Benjamin said as they walked along. “They look as though they have sat behind bars for weeks. He will never make a gentleman with frowzy falcons.”
“You do not keep birds at all,” observed Catherine.
“No, but if I did keep them, I would keep the feathers on them. If it weren’t for that Joseph, they’d be bald as any plucked chicken. They need good feed and exercise.”
“William is ill,” said Catherine. She did not look down at the man but she could see him frown from the corner
of her eye. They strolled into the sorry little village with its lines of sagging cottages. Plague had carried off half the population years back, and the empty dwellings were falling back into the shapes of fallen trees and brush piles. Mounds of moldy thatch lay against sprawling, unpruned rose bushes. Catherine had always thought Mount Grace small and poor, but compared to Havenston, it was a paradise of tidiness and business.
“So this is your ancestral town,” said Benjamin. “Named for your family, am I right?”
“My mother’s family,” Catherine said. She unhooked her leg from the pommel and as she slid off the saddle, Benjamin caught her and lowered her to the ground. His hands only slid a little way up her bodice, and he let go before she had to shake him off. She regarded the high road, her hand at her brow for shade. “I have wanted to improve the place, but it gets sadder and sadder. It wants a guiding hand. It needs hewing and shaping, like a hedge of greenery.”
“There is perhaps an opportunity before you,” said Benjamin, when they came up to the constable’s house. “May I have leave to relax at the public house while you carry out your investigations?”
“You don’t need my leave. You may do what you like.” Catherine pointed up the road. “It is just there. Sign of the Rose and Thistle.”
“I know where it is,” he said.
“How?”
“You talk as though I’m a stranger here. Catherine, I knew Robert Overton from university. I knew about your convent and all you women long before you knew about me.”
Catherine blushed and she put her hands over her cheeks. She was a fool, supposing herself in command of Overton. Once it had been Havenston House, a smaller and darker dwelling. But that was before her birth. Its long history hung over the village like an angry old ghost. No one woman could lay it to rest. Certainly not a nun. Whether that nun was a Havens or an Overton.
Benjamin said, “You don’t need to be ashamed. Other women are not ashamed. You were in the convent. Now you are out.”
“I am not other women and you know nothing of my feelings.”
“Of that I have no doubt.” He tipped the front of his hat at her and led the horse down the dusty road, leaving Catherine alone to knock on the constable’s door.
The man opened before Catherine had rapped twice, and she almost struck him on the face. Peter Grubb had a nose like a rooster’s, and he leaned forward into the world, as though a strong wind were always at his back. Now his blue eyes widened. “Are you home then, Lady Overton?”
“It seems so,” said Catherine. She drew back to avoid collision with the nose.
“Bad doings up at the House.” Grubb made room for Catherine to enter, and she squeezed around his forward posture. The constable’s house was one of the largest in the village, and the walls were hung with tapestries that might have at one time been beautiful but were spotty with mildew and moth holes. Catherine’s convent had owned better ones, and Robert Overton’s men had kicked them aside in disgust. The king’s men. Grubb’s windows were cloudy and the front room stank. Mistress Grubb met them by the stairs and silently held out a hand to Catherine. She only came to Catherine’s shoulder, and the coif didn’t completely disguise her scalp through her thin curls. She said, “What have you done to your hand, child?”
Catherine held up the bandaged thumb. “A royal dog.”
“So you have met the king?” said Mistress Grubb.
“And his animals, as well. Is there any word about Teresa and Hannah?” Catherine followed Peter, who followed his wife, into a small front room. It was dark and hot from a murmuring fire, which sent tendrils of smoke slithering both up the hearth and into the air. Catherine wanted to tend the chimney, but Mistress Grubb went on through a far door and Peter motioned for Catherine to take a wooden armchair. Neither of them seemed to take note of the dimness.
“Gone,” said the constable. “I figure clean gone. No remains but a few strips of cloth a mower found in a hedge along the Durham Road.” Grubb opened a wooden box on a table in the corner and drew out a scrap of blue wool. “Is this something you know?”
Catherine went to the sooty window to see the piece better. “It’s too small. This could have come from anything. But what about Joan and Ruth?”
Peter Grubb folded the fabric back into the box and scratched the white stubble on his chin. “Them two were from up north, weren’t they?”
“Years ago. What does that have to do with anything?”
Mistress Grubb came in with cheese and bread and a pitcher of ale. “I figure there’s people here don’t want northerners in the village. Not northerners teaching girls to live above their means. They won’t be able to get them husbands. They’re fighters up there, making like they aren’t part of this island.” The constable worried his chin whiskers again. “Some say you shouldn’t harbor Scotswomen in your house.”
Catherine said, “They think these murders are my fault? I have not even been here.”
“Fault or no, they were in your house.” Peter Grubb dropped into a cushioned chair, which bloomed dust around him. He chopped off a piece of bread and stuffed it into his mouth. “They was murdered sure as England belongs to King Henry, and not by your hand, Lady Overton. I figure there’s some wishing I would sweep the whole matter into the back garden and be done with it. But I don’t care if they was havin’ supper with Old Nick under the moon, I won’t have women throttled to death on my watch.”
“There’s others that do care,” said Mistress Grubb at the doorway. She settled her haunches onto a stool across from her husband. “We’ve got shed of the Pope. There’s those who’d say we don’t need to be spinster-ridden. Upsets the order of things. Pour me a draught, Peter. I’m not saying that I agree.”
The constable did as he was told, for his wife and for Catherine. “Killing turns the whole world upside down,” he muttered.
“You won’t find any agreement about that in this village,” said his wife. “Folks don’t care that they’re dead.”
“I figure that’s not altogether true, Mistress Grubb. The women whose daughters were learning to read and write never complained. Not one. They embroidered. They learned herbals.”
Mistress Grubb’s curls bobbed in her fury. “You hear any of them asking you to send them more teachers? You hear that?”
Catherine couldn’t breathe. “Perhaps if I were to speak to them—”
Mistress Grubb heaved herself to her feet and huffed with the effort. “You should leave well enough alone, Lady Overton, pardon my saying so. I don’t blame you, you know I don’t. I was ever the friend of you and your sisters. But there’s no improving this village.” She shook her head and let her gaze drift to the ceiling.
“Constable Grubb,” said Catherine. “Have you any idea who did this?”
“No,” he said. “More’s the shame on my head.”
“Well, I will let you be for now,” said Catherine. “But I mean to speak to the people of Havenston.”
“I figure I’m not the man to stop you,” said Peter Grubb. Mistress Grubb said nothing.
The couple let Catherine find her own way to their door. The sun had shrunk to a white dot high in the sky, and Catherine hurried to the Hill cottage, where Ruth had spent her last morning. She knocked, and though she thought she heard scuffling inside, no one answered. The window was open, but no one responded to Catherine’s call except a small striped cat. It leapt onto the oak sill and arched its back. Catherine gave the animal a pat and moved on.
Joan had been just around the corner and through a tall hedge, teaching the MacIntosh girls their letters. Catherine was sweating but the cottage was only a few paces on, and a child skipped across the front garden and pushed through the gate as she approached. The girl had left the door open, and Catherine called a hallo as she stepped inside. The dwelling was low-beamed and blackened by fire, and the dirt floor had not been swept. A pot bubbled on the small hearth, and a pile of cloth lay on a plank table.
“Mistress MacIntosh? Are you here?
” Catherine came a few more steps into the room and called again.
After a few seconds, a narrow door squeaked open. It was clearly a space for wood and cooking tools, but a whole woman stepped out. It was the girls’ mother, shrunken and scared, staring out from a collapsed face. She appeared to be toothless, though her hair, sprouting from around the edges of her filthy coif, was as dark as it had ever been.
“What in the world are you doing in there?” asked Catherine. “Are you in some danger?”
“Not ‘til you arrived. Madam. I supposed you meant to stand there until you seen me, so here I am. And now you must go. ‘Twill go bad for me for you to be seen here, rich as you are.”
“Has someone hurt you? I am trying to find out what happened to Joan.” Catherine took a step forward, and the woman backed away with light steps, ready to run.
“You sent her here to ruin my daughters. We were trying to live right and you sent that woman here to put my children out of their heads. I know now. I know how the world should go. This is England and I will be an Englishwoman.”
“Who has put this into your mind?”
“Who has put me right, is what you should say. Don’t need to say, got a right to my thoughts like any other Christian. Now I have work to do, if it please you. Madam.” She stepped around Catherine and opened the door wider. “Have my young ones to feed.”
In the light, Catherine could see how thin the woman was. “Was Joan here the day she went missing?”
“Don’t know. Can’t remember. Oughtta sent her away sooner.” The woman gazed into a spidery corner, by the little door.
“Will you not help me find out who killed her?”
“Naebody done it. Naebody atall. That girl gone and got herself killed and I just thank my God she didn’t get me killed along with her.” She trained a dim look on Catherine. “Now you must go back to your castle and your husband, Madam, and leave the likes of me to raise my bairns—my children—according to God’s and the English king’s will.”
City of Ladies Page 21