City of Ladies

by Sarah Kennedy

  “Come inside. I’ll see if I can get him up. Follow me.”

  “What’s all this?” He indicated the table.

  “Herb-of-the-Cross. William needs it to take the yellow from his eyes. I am preparing a tisane for him.”

  “Is this some Popish remedy?” The constable lifted a stem. Tossed it back with the others as though it burned him.

  “I have not seen the plant attend either mass or chapel,” said Catherine evenly. “They say it is the herb that was placed in Our Lord’s side when he was speared by the Romans.”

  “Hmph. And he died anyway, seems like.” The constable was peering into pots and shelves, lifting the utensils and putting them to his nose.

  Catherine snatched a spoon from him and returned it to its hook. “And he rose again on the third day.”

  “Smells like a witch’s brew in here.” Grubb was now spying into shadowed corners, as though he would find a murderer crouching in one of them, bloody knife in hand.

  “It smells like a still room,” said Catherine. Weariness gave her temper free rein. “Have you never been in one before now?”

  “I figure I should keep to my study like any other man.”

  “Then you had best prepare yourself for a shock above stairs. William is in what is known as a bedchamber.” She lit a taper at the hearth and led him up to the second floor. “Wait here. He will not want to be caught unprepared.”

  The constable’s eyelid flickered. “Don’t take too long. I’ll need to have your testimonies separate.”

  “For Christ’s sake,” sputtered Catherine. “I’m the one who found the women. Would I have sent for you if I were trying to hide them from you? Wait outside the door if you are so worried.”

  “Don’t know for sure who found them. Not my concern. I figure my concern’s to get to the truth here. Not wanting to hear the same story come at me from every direction.”

  It made sense enough and she beckoned for him to follow her. “I will only be a moment.” Catherine slipped into the bedchamber and found William propped up, awake, against the pillows. An empty cup sat beside him on a table, still giving off the scent of dock, and Catherine moved it away as she sat on the edge of the mattress. “Peter Grubb is here. He wants to speak with you.”

  “I heard him. The man’s got a voice like thunder. And he is almost as articulate in his speech. Well, send him in.”

  The door opened and the constable was with them. “Heard the invitation. Need to get this business done. Madam, if you will leave us.”

  William nodded slightly. Reg stood by without speaking.

  “As you wish,” she said.

  Catherine wandered down the hall to the far window, where she could see the watchmen in the gloomy moonlight. They’d set the bundle on the flagstones and were in conversation with Geoffrey White, William’s master of horse, who stood with his arms folded tight against his chest. One of the watchmen was pointing in the direction of the field and nodding. Then he pointed at the house. Geoffrey White unfolded his arms and wiped his face with his palm. The watchman took off his cap and scratched his head. Said something to his companion. Geoffrey raised his shoulders. The other watchman shook his head and made a chopping motion with one hand, to which the first responded by mimicking a strangling. Geoffrey wrapped his arms around himself again. All three then cast their eyes on the damp bundle and seemed to stop talking altogether. Geoffrey turned on his heel and walked back toward the stable. The other two watched him go, and the first one nodded sagely at some scrap of wisdom from the other.

  Catherine was sweating, and her belly cramped. She turned away from the view below, and the hallway wobbled before her. Overtired. She needed sleep.

  The chamber door opened and the constable emerged. “Thanks for that, sir. I will tell the lady.”

  “Tell the lady what?” called Catherine.

  “Oh, there you are. I thought women kept their ears to keyholes when men were conversing.”

  She’d had enough of the man. “And where did you hear that? At a keyhole?”

  “Your man says we’re to have them buried in the family graveyard. We’ll have to put ‘em in together though. He says to call on your father to say the prayers.”

  “It’s already been done.” Catherine led the way down stairs, the constable on her heels. She called Geoffrey from the back door of the kitchen. “Have you seen to William’s birds?” she asked.

  “I’m gone to it just now, Madam.” He did not look at her. “Glad to have an order ‘round here at last that begs to be followed.” He bowed slightly and backed away, then trotted toward the stables.

  47

  Catherine sat at the still room table and, pulling the candle stick closer, began sorting the vervain. A pain wormed through her, and she pressed her forehead with the back of her hand.

  Peter Grubb coughed and shifted his feet. Finally he sat across from her and said, “I figure I will take your testimony.”

  “Ask your questions. I have to prepare this before the leaves spoil, so you will have to ask while I work.”

  “Ladies usually cry. Your women lie murdered out in the yard. Murdered in a most horrible fashion. And your eyes are yet dry. I have a wife who laughs when she delights, weeps when she sorrows. I don’t see her managing her household affairs when the dead are rotting in her garden.”

  “Your wife is an uncomplicated soul. I am happy for her. If she has women to do her tasks for her, I am even happier.”

  “And your situation is complicated then? You want to tell me what gets in the way of your tears? You clogged with guilt, woman? You know something you shouldn’t? Seen something you can’t get clear of?” He took the leaf from her hand and ripped it down the middle with his teeth. He spit the remains onto the floor.

  Catherine chose another and examined it, front and back, before laying it into the basin at her elbow. “You measure all women by your wife. That is perhaps an error. Not all who weep are grieving. Not all who keep their own counsels have secrets. Those women were dear to me. They were not my women. They were their own and God’s. Someone has taken their lives and the lives of two before them. My grief lodges here.” Catherine touched her own breast. “If I weep, I will do it alone, I thank you. I work because there is work to be done. My task is to rid my husband of a fever, and if you will stop ruining my herbs I might succeed at it. Your task is to find someone who will strangle innocent women with his bare hands.”

  “His? You know it to be a man?”

  “I know it to be death by strangling. There were marks on the necks of Joan and Ruth. Teresa and Hannah were found buried in a similar way. It points to the same villain. Two of them at once? It could not have been a woman. At least not a woman alone.”

  Margaret came down the stairs, calling for Catherine. When she entered the room and saw Peter Grubb, she froze. “What, another suitor for my brother’s wife? Are you having a private conversation under my brother’s roof? Or perhaps you are asking her about her movements with one Benjamin Davies down in the village?”

  “I am taking the mistress’s testimony,” said the constable. He took the measure of Margaret with his eyes and stood. “I figure I will need yours as well, Lady.”

  “Mine?” Margaret’s fingertips fluttered to her throat. “I told Catherine not to keep those women here. I told her they were unreformed. I thank God they have been taken without someone burning down the House around our ears. I told Catherine they would bring us all before a court for treason.” Her voice had gone high and breathy, as though a cloud were in her throat.

  “You told her all that, did you?” The constable moved a step closer to Margaret. “Sounds to me as though you had some knowledge of these women’s heresies yourself.”

  Margaret backed up, keeping the distance between them. “I certainly did. They wore their beads inside their dresses. They kept relics and icons.” She pointed over the constable’s shoulder at Catherine. “She knows. She tutored them. Ask her.”

  “He has al
ready asked me his questions. Now let me ask you, Margaret. How came you by such knowledge?” Catherine rose. “You make up your stories as your tongue rides along. You know of nothing those women did or what they wore. You wouldn’t know a relic from an old bone if John the Baptist himself sprang full-formed from it and twisted your nose.”

  Margaret smirked. “Is that how you concealed them? In the charnel house? Well, that is certainly where they will dwell now, to all eternity, so you should be content.”

  “You weasel-hearted acorn-brain.” Catherine felt the rage in her arm and she raised it, but at the constable’s glance, she picked up another leaf. “You haven’t got the sense God gave a new-hatched pullet, Margaret, and you never have had.”

  The constable looked from one woman to the other. “You sisters need to work out your differences.” He shook his head and muttered, “Women’s tempers. I figure that to be the death of men. I will have these bodies laid in a tomb until your priest arrives and we will bury them as he sees fit. But we will speak of this further, you two and I.” He went out to the watchmen, shaking his head.

  “Now you may see what your great learning has brought upon us,” said Margaret. “Four dead and the law at our very doors. It is no great wonder my brother lies ill. He has not been well since he laid eyes upon you. You should let me make him his drink.”

  “He has had a sad spell of sickness. It is common enough among mortal men. But I see nothing from your hand that heals him.”

  “I am a simple woman caring for a family. How can I fight against your power?”

  “What power? Margaret, your brain is filled with girls’ fancies.”

  “You know what power. Others know it too. They say you have the devil in your fingers and his imps dance in your eyes. If the constable has not heard it yet, I expect that he will before this is over.”

  48

  Father John and Joseph arrived together the next morning, grey-faced with exhaustion. The priest tumbled from his gelding at the kitchen door without speaking to the young groomsman, who caught up the reins and plodded both horses on to the stable. Catherine had heard them ride up and ran out to meet him.

  “The constable has been here,” said Catherine. “The man suspects the whole house, and I am sure he will be back here before the sun is high.”

  Father John came in, easing himself onto the kitchen bench, and Catherine slid a goblet of ale and a loaf of bread between his elbows. The old priest fell to the food without speaking, and when Joseph came to the open door, Catherine raised her arm toward the table, and he took a seat across from the older man. Catherine brought more drink, and Joseph emptied the willow bark from a leather bag onto the far end of the table.

  “Did I hear a horse?” Eleanor came in from the laundry, carrying the baby in one arm. When she saw Joseph, she raised her hands for an embrace, but Catherine shook her head slightly and Eleanor bent to the bark instead, as though she had meant to inspect its quality. “I am glad you’re here, Father,” she said.

  The priest paused over a chunk of bread. “It’s a sorry reason for my presence, girl.”

  “Yes, Father,” muttered Eleanor.

  “This is fine, Joseph,” said Catherine, turning over the willow.

  “Your husband does not improve?” said Father John.

  “The fever comes and goes. One minute he is better. The next he is down in the bed,” said Catherine. “It mystifies me that a fever can work so on a body.”

  “Perhaps bleeding would issue forth the demon,” said Father John.

  “Let me try this first,” said Catherine. There was noise outside, and they all looked to the window. The constable was handing his reins to Geoffrey, and the watchmen were dismounting. “Speak of the devil.”

  “I’ll be off now, Madam, if the willow is acceptable,” said Joseph.

  “Off? Where?” asked Catherine.

  “I have chores. The stables need cleaning.” He was chewing his lip again.

  “All right. Stay close in case the constable wants a word with you.”

  “Yes, Madam.” Joseph pulled on his cap. His eyes met Eleanor’s for a second, and he gave her a half-wink before he disappeared out the door into the house. It would take him either to the front door or around the servants’ stairs to the lower door on the other side of the house. Father John seemed not to notice that he had gone the wrong way out, but Eleanor watched the doorway for several seconds after he was no longer in it.

  “Eleanor,” said Catherine, “will you set this to a soak? Heat the water just to simmer and weight these so that they stay under.”The constable let himself in, knocking as he opened the door. “The priest is here. Good. There is work for you, sad work indeed. I figure this is the worst job a man of God would have to see.”

  “God sends us the tasks that need doing,” said Father John, stretching. “Where are the bodies?”

  “In the tomb,” said Catherine. “Let me get William and we will have the funeral.” She hurried upstairs and into the bedchamber, shaking her husband awake. But William would not come down. He pulled the linens up to his chin, pleading. “I have a great heaviness of the head. I cannot rise.” Reginald came silently to the door that led down to his sleeping chamber. He looked at William for a few seconds, then disappeared from where he had come.

  “Father is here,” Catherine said. “I have fresh willow bark, and I am making you tea. You might have another draught of dock in the meantime.”

  “No. I cannot. Let Margaret attend,” William said, rolling away from Catherine and putting his face into the pillow. “She is desperate to prove herself the mistress of this house. See how she likes watching her dead flopped onto a shelf to soften.”

  “They are not her dead,” said Catherine, bristling a little, but William groaned and pulled the linen over his head, and she went out without him to put Hannah and Ruth to their rest.

  49

  The funeral was a dismal ritual, the bodies wrapped tightly and stuffed together into a plank box cobbled together from scraps. Catherine had packed sweet marjoram around the shrouds, but Father John Bridle leaned away from the coffin as he spoke. Margaret was at the front beside Catherine, and halfway through the first prayer, she began to drum her fingers lightly against her thigh as though she could speed up the priest. Benjamin was on the other side of her, and Catherine, on the verge of her sight, could see him casting irritated glances at the beating hands.

  The maids stood with Reg Goodall behind Catherine and Margaret. Eleanor whimpered softly, and one of the younger girls wailed once and went suddenly quiet, as though someone had elbowed her ribs. The men were behind the maids, unchanged from their work clothes, and the sweet musk of horse and iron and manured earth stirred up with the profound and sickening tang of human decay that wafted from the front. The constable and two watchmen stood in the back, and Catherine knew they were taking measure of the mourners.

  Father John cut the ceremony short, and when he finished he crossed himself quickly, then beckoned to the manservants to carry the dead to the family tomb. The maids and Catherine followed, but Margaret excused herself.

  “This tires us all. Let me take the baby, Sister.” She held out her hands for Veronica.

  Catherine studied Margaret. “You want to hold her?”

  “Yes. I am weary and I want comfort.” Her voice grew silky. “Please, Sister. Let me be mother to the child in this time. You will feel the grief on you too and you need to rest. This is no time for us to contend. We argue too readily. We always have.”

  Catherine handed the sleeping baby to Margaret. Perhaps death had warmed her heart a little. Margaret put her face against the soft tuft of red hair and went up the stairs without looking back.

  Peter Grubb stepped between Catherine and the three maids.

  “I figure I need to speak to these young ones,” he said.

  The women’s faces were pallid and twitchy with terror, like a trio of trapped rabbits, and Catherine couldn’t tell whether they were more afra
id of the constable or of the dead women.

  “Yes,” she said. She thrust her finger toward them. “You speak the truth, upon your souls, do you hear me?”

  “Yes, Madam,” they chorused.

  “Take them into the front gallery,” said Catherine. “And keep your voices low. William is sleeping and the whole family needs calm.”

  “I will attend them,” said Benjamin, “with your permission, Catherine.” The constable glowered at him, but Benjamin went on. “I wish to take my own record of the inquiry.”

  “I figure I can keep notes for myself,” sniffed the constable.

  “Very well. I will keep them for this family then,” said Benjamin.

  “It pleases me,” said Catherine. “Peter, Benjamin will go with you.”

  Catherine returned to the kitchen to wait and found Reginald seated at the table, a cup between his palms.

  “Should you not be upstairs with your master?” asked Catherine.

  William’s man refilled his cup from an ale pitcher. “Master’s not wanting much service.”

  “No.” Catherine sat across from Reginald. “What ails him?” she asked softly.

  “He doesn’t confide in me, Madam. He’s eaten up by his sickness.”

  “He doesn’t mend under my care. I have wondered if there is some unseen malady. Some trouble in his soul. Has he said aught to you, Reginald? Anything?”

  The man shook his head. “Not to me. Master says almost nothing to me since we returned to this place. I wish he did.”

  “And you are well? No fever or sweats?”

  “My mind is as clear as summer, and I have been at his side every day.”

  “Curious,” said Catherine.

  “Indeed.” He looked her boldly in the face. “The whole house has gone curious, if you ask me. I feel a cold spirit blowing through it.” He bit his lip. “May I have leave to go up?”