Searcher of the Dead

by Nancy Herriman

  “I do not know!” he snapped, and ran off.

  Bess was yet staring after the boy, who had turned up the highway and was halfway to his home, when she heard the sound of sticks breaking beneath the weight of heavy feet. The noise was headed in her direction. Alarmed, she turned and scrambled backward, her pulse slowing only when the fellow cleared the shadows and broke into the sunlight.

  “Constable, you frightened me.”

  Doffing his cap, Kit Harwoode glanced after the boy, no longer visible. “Well, did you learn anything?”

  He did not sound pleased with her. “He is the brother of a patient. That is all,” she dissembled.

  “You dashed across a field to speak to a boy who merely happens to be the brother of a patient?” he asked. “Mistress, honesty is advisable when speaking with a constable.”

  “As you wish. I was curious what he had been doing in the woods,” Bess said. “So near to the copse where Fulke died.”

  “I have already told you this matter is my responsibility, have I not?”

  She lifted her chin. “Do you think me incapable of useful assistance?”

  He cocked an eyebrow. “Ah, Mistress, you do test me.”

  “My sister says ‘vex.’”

  “She may be more accurate than I. Come.” He looked over at the trees. “I would have you help me search.”

  He turned away, expecting her to follow. Which she did.

  “For what do we search?” she asked.

  “I am not certain. But whatever it is, it occupied Rodge Anwicke so intently that he did not notice I was watching him.”

  “You know his name.”

  “I do,” he said. “The boy is often suspected of petty robberies. He has not ever been convicted though, else he might be missing an ear or two as punishment.”

  To have gone from minor thievery to murder …

  They entered the trees, where the branches overhead cast shadows upon the ground and the musty aroma of damp earth and rotting leaves filled the air. The constable strode in the direction of a fallen tree. It had toppled so long ago that saplings now grew up around the log, which was thicker than the torso of a stout man.

  “The boy was nosing about in this area,” said the constable, stopping to look around. The collapse of the tree had created a narrow clearing among the others still standing.

  “The leaves are trampled into the dirt here.” Bess pointed to a spot near the end of the log. “I would guess the boy … or at least someone comes here frequently.”

  “Agreed.” Kit Harwoode bent to more closely examine the ground.

  She scanned the earth as well. The soil and leaves were most definitely crushed by the regular stamp of feet. Perhaps Rodge Anwicke came here to hide from his family. It was quiet, removed from the view of the road and the fields. Most importantly, his cottage could not be seen from here.

  “When I was young,” Bess said, her memories prompted by her surroundings, “my siblings and I would play all-hid among a stand of trees near our house in Oxford.”

  “You grew up in Oxford?” the constable asked. He did not lift his attention from his examination of the area, but he did prove he was listening.

  “Yes.” Bess nudged aside leaves and sticks with the toe of her shoe. “One time, my sister lost interest in the game and neglected to try to find me. I stayed in my hiding spot behind a spiny thicket of gooseberries for so long I began to cry. And then Robert finally came …”

  Her brother. Ever her savior. Before Martin.

  “Hiding … ah!” Partway along the length of the log, he had come to a stop. He dragged away branches that leaned against it. “Ah!” he repeated

  “What?” Stepping over the log, Bess hurried to his side. “What is it?”

  “The log is hollow. Rotted out.” Kneeling down, he reached into the cavity and started pulling out detritus.

  “It is but filled with the leavings of woodland creatures that likely have used the hollowed log for warmth,” she said. “What has this to do with the Anwicke lad?”

  “When I was young, Mistress Ellyott, I engaged in hiding things from my cousin. Items Gibb valued. In order to torment him.” As proof, from within the depths of the log, he pulled out a small woven bag. Bess peered over the constable’s shoulder as he undid the ties that bound it shut and spilled out the contents—a silver aglet once attached to the end of a lace, a carved clay pipe with a broken stem, a substantial length of fine violet silk ribbon, a pair of oft-handled bone dice.

  “The boy has been hiding his trinkets here. They do not look like items taken from his siblings, however,” said Bess. More likely they were items he had found or, perhaps, stolen. She peered at the ribbon. “I believe I have seen that very ribbon in Arthur Stamford’s shop. What a curious connection, think you not, Constable?”

  “Aye, most interesting, Mistress,” said the constable. “As is this.”

  The final item tumbled from the bag onto the dirt. One silver sixpence, imprinted with the image of Queen Elizabeth. An amount the boy might earn for a day’s labor, and too important to the needs of his family to be tucked away.

  “His mother could use that coin for food for her children,” said Bess.

  “She could. The question is from whence it came. But these items are not all.”

  He stretched his hand deeper into the cavity and, with a grim twist of his lips, withdrew a crushed hat. The constable shook it to restore its original shape. It was a most distinctive hat, with a tall crown and a feather, and covered in mud.

  Fulke’s hat.

  CHAPTER 10

  “Where do you think the boy found Fulke’s hat?” Bess asked. Battered and dirty, it was still recognizable.

  Constable Harwoode looked up at her. “He took it from the body of a dead man, Mistress.”

  “Does this mean Rodge is the murderer?” Relief swept over her. If the boy had killed Fulke, she need no longer suspect the Langhams or Master Stamford. Or the vagrant. “Although Fulke’s hat could have fallen to the ground and he merely picked it up.”

  The constable gathered the coin and the trinkets he had spilled out and returned them to the bag. “We shall know where he obtained it once I ask him.”

  Hat and bag in hand, the constable stood.

  “Why might the boy be honest?” Rodge would fear a charge of murder or a charge of theft. And either would be a hanging offense.

  “Perhaps he will surprise the both of us, Mistress,” he said. “Accompany me to the boy’s house. I would not have you accuse me of putting false words in the lad’s mouth.”

  He did not wait for Bess’s agreement and charged ahead. Encumbered by trailing skirts and a satchel that banged against her hip, she hurdled branches and muddy patches of dirt, which he easily strode over.

  “Constable, I must ask if you have ever searched for a murderer before.”

  “Thankfully not. Although I have served for only a year so far.” He looked over at her. “Do you question my competence?”

  She supposed that she did. “How did you come to be constable?” she asked when they reached the road. Such a role was given only to men of substance, a burgess of the town.

  “My cousin Sir Walter put my name forward.”

  “He trusted your integrity and intelligence.”

  He released a self-mocking laugh. “Quite the opposite, Mistress. Wat thinks me an undisciplined churl. As most Harwoodes are, in his estimation.”

  “Yet if he put your name forward, he had to have faith in you.”

  “A bit of fun at my expense, Mistress,” he said, a wry smile on his lips. “I came here to live with my cousin Gibb’s family when I was no longer welcome in the town of my birth. Because of them, I was provided opportunities that enabled me to become a man of property. Wat still held the opinion I’d not learned proper manners, however. He had not forgotten the wild boy he’d known in his youth.” The constable paused, perhaps to recall that wild boy and his reproving cousin.

  “And yet …” />
  “He thought it a great witticism and a lesson to recommend me for the position of constable,” he continued. “Somehow, he managed to convince the other burgesses that I was the best candidate and that my brawling days were past. As none of them wanted to be constable, they were not so difficult to convince.”

  “Has being constable taught you proper manners?” she asked.

  He stopped and gazed down at her. “What think you, Mistress?”

  “I know you not well enough to say.”

  He chuckled, and soon they neared the Anwickes’. A wisp of smoke rose from the smoke bay, and the shutters were down from the windows, permitting a burst of afternoon sunlight to enter. Bess’s patient leaned against the whitewashed mud wall, the toes of her bare feet curling in the dirt, her face uplifted to the sunshine. The bruise on her left cheek had begun to turn from purple to green, a sign that it was healing. She twirled a drop spindle, spinning yarn from a teased mass of wool she had draped over her shoulder. Bess did not see her brother. ’Twas possible he had not returned to the cottage and their visit here was wasted.

  Upon hearing footfalls upon the road, the girl’s eyes went wide. She pushed away from the wall and rushed with her bundle of wool and drop spindle into the cottage. The chickens that had been pecking near the wattle fence startled and fluttered off.

  “That was the Anwickes’ daughter, whom I treated for a burn,” said Bess, an event that seemed as though it had occurred months ago, rather than only a few days earlier. “I think she is unable to speak. Poor child.”

  “She did not appear happy to see us,” said the man at her side.

  “You have said Rodge has been accused of multiple crimes. I expect none of the Anwickes would be happy to see you heading for their house.”

  Goodwife Anwicke stepped through the open door, her infant cradled in her arms. The baby, removed from its swaddling cloth, squirmed. Bess’s patient peeked around the doorway.

  “Good day, Widow Ellyott,” she said, eyeing the constable. “Might I ask what brings you here today, Constable?”

  “I would speak to your son,” he answered.

  “What is he blamed for now?”

  He held up Fulke’s hat and the bag. “Is he fond of collecting items and hiding them in a log in the woods?”

  “There is no crime in doing so,” she said. “Rodge be a magpie, liking his shiny things. Fetch your brother, Maud.”

  Maud. At last Bess had a name for the girl who did not speak, and whose name she had not thought to ask.

  She ran inside. Shortly thereafter, Bess heard the raised voice of an angry boy.

  “Pardon me.” Goodwife Anwicke, whose babe had begun to whimper, its tiny face pinching in readiness to howl, retreated into the house. She returned without her infant, shoving her son before her.

  “The constable begs to speak with you,” she said. She cuffed the boy on the ear, which caused Bess to wince far more than he did. “I do not want to learn that you’ve gone and taken something valuable.”

  “I’ve not done!” he cried, his face pinking with humiliation and rage.

  “And remove your cap when speaking to your betters, boy!” his mother demanded.

  Rodge grabbed his cap from his head, his cheeks turning redder.

  “Among the items in this bag is a sixpence,” said the constable. “Where did you get the coin and this hat?”

  “A sixpence?” Goodwife Anwicke glared at her son. “Money? What else have you been hiding, Rodge?”

  The constable waited out the tirade. “Boy, I would have you tell me where you got that coin and this hat.”

  When Rodge hesitated, his mother roughly prodded his shoulder with her elbow. From inside the cottage came the howl of her baby. “Tell the constable, Rodge,” she said. “Else your father will learn of this.”

  “I shall not see you charged with theft this time,” Constable Harwoode added. “If you help me.”

  The lad peered at him. He had sharp, intelligent eyes, watchful as a hawk’s and as calculating as those of a cutpurse taking the measure of his next victim.

  “I get paid. For work,” he said.

  “What sort of work?” asked the constable.

  Rodge’s focus did not waver from the constable’s face. “You know, this and that.”

  Goodwife Anwicke prodded him again. “Be plain, Rodge.”

  He dodged her elbow. “This and that!”

  “And the hat?” Bess asked. “Where did it come from?”

  “I found it. In a ditch near the woods.”

  “Near the body of a dead man hanging from a tree?” asked Constable Harwoode.

  His words were blunt, meant to startle the lad into an admission. He had not anticipated the nauseating effect they might have upon Bess, still reeling from the manner of Fulke’s death.

  Goodwife Anwicke gaped at Bess. “Rodge had naught to do with your brother-in-law’s suicide, Widow Ellyott. How could he?”

  “I saw no dead man,” her son said, his chin high. “I found the hat in a ditch hard by the road near the trees. There.” He pointed to the south of where they stood. “’Twas there.”

  “And when did you make this discovery?” asked the constable.

  “A few days past.”

  “Which day?” Bess asked. “At what time?”

  “Tuesday,” he answered quickly. The day that Fulke had met his end. “Late it was, once I had finished helping my father clear stones from our neighbor’s field.”

  The constable buffed the backs of his fingers against his beard. “Late. Did it not rain heavily late that day?”

  “What care I for rain?” Rodge responded.

  “So you vow, Rodge Anwicke, that you have no knowledge about the death of Master Fulke Crofton, though you came to possess his hat,” said the constable.

  “I do not,” said the boy. “I do not!”

  Abruptly, Constable Harwoode thanked them both and strode toward the road. Bess offered her goodbyes and rushed after him.

  “He could be telling the truth, Constable.”

  “I do not care for Rodge Anwicke and his supposed ‘truth,’ if you would know my mind,” he answered.

  “Then why did you not arrest the boy, if you are so certain he lied to you?”

  “I shall set Gibb to watching the lad. Rodge Anwicke knows something or saw something that he wishes to keep quiet. Short of torture …” A muscle in his jaw twitched. “I fear I cannot get the boy to tell me what that something is. I must wait to have him reveal his knowledge in some other fashion. Perhaps we might also learn where he obtained that coin.”

  “Did Rodge perchance witness the crime and then was paid to hold his tongue?” she asked. “Or mayhap he was paid to assist.”

  “Either is possible,” said the constable. “And if so, I am most interested to discover who it was did the paying.”

  * * *

  “Two lines across Fulke Crofton’s neck have convinced you that he was murdered.” Wat pushed aside the papers he had been reading and leaned back in his privy office chair. He folded his hands across the carnation silk of his doublet, its dozens of silver buttons winking in the gleam of a lantern he’d lit against the gloom.

  Kit had come to the manor immediately after accompanying the inquisitive Mistress Ellyott home and finding Wat’s summons waiting at his house.

  “They have,” said Kit.

  “Our crowner has been at his work for many years. I believe he knows what he is about. And he is not happy with your disputing his ruling.”

  “He came to you to complain. That is why you sent for me.”

  Wat did not answer. Wat did not need to answer.

  “Our coroner’s vanity will not allow him to admit any error,” said Kit.

  “And neither will your pride allow you to admit you might be mistaken in this regard, coz.”

  Kit tamped down a sharp-tongued retort. “The fellow had gone to Devizes that morning to level a complaint against Arthur Stamford. For monies owed to him,
” he said. “Such plans do not sound like the actions of a man who intended to kill himself that same day.”

  His cousin tapped fingers against the table. “What is it you want to prove, Kit?”

  Your guilt? My worth?

  His cousin had always been taller, stronger, cocksure. The man who stood to inherit position and wealth while Kit stood to inherit only his father’s debts. Be thankful, Kit, for any good your aunt’s family bestows upon you, his father had said a few months before he’d died. What good had thankfulness to the Howes done for his father though? It had required years of hard work for Kit to pay off those debts. To become a freeholder with sufficient property to no longer need to bow and scrape before the Howes.

  “What of the land that Crofton owned along the river?” asked Kit. “You wanted it, but he would not sell.”

  Wat drew in a lengthy breath, exhaling it with a lift of his fingers. “I desire to open a mill. The sole one we have is inadequate for the needs of this area. In order to do so, however, I require that land. The location would be perfect. Crofton had no particular use for it, aside from grazing some sheep, yet he would not sell it to me.”

  “His wife might though. Now that she has nothing but a house and a bit of ground by the river.”

  “Do you suggest I am responsible for those lines around Crofton’s neck?”

  Kit shrugged. “You knew he was bound for Devizes that morning—”

  Wat stood, the suddenness of his movement knocking over his chair. “You push the bonds of kinship too far, Kit Harwoode. I owe you no loyalty.”

  Did he not? Did he not owe Kit years of loyalty in exchange for Kit’s silence over what had occurred one summer’s day so long ago? A bit of rough play had gotten out of hand, and the injured fellow had slunk away from the village. So Wat claimed. Kit, though, did not believe his cousin’s story. And he’d not forgotten what he had seen.

  He stared at his cousin until Wat was forced to remember as well. “Tell me you had naught to do with his death, and I will be satisfied,” said Kit.