A Murder by Any Name

by Suzanne M. Wolfe

  The Queen glanced at the corpse, then back at Nick. Her comprehension was instant. “I will so order it,” she said. Then continuing, “Find him, Nick.” Taking one of the lanterns, Elizabeth walked toward the steps, her back erect as always, the only clue to her sorrow the slowness of her steps.

  Nick ordered the remains lifted on boards and carried to the crypt of the same chapel where, only a few days before, Cecily’s body had been found. Before he left the cellar, he steeled himself to search the pool of blood on the flagstones where Mary had lain, but discovered nothing. Wiping his bloody hands on a rag he found on one of the cellar tables, he summoned a guard from the top of the steps and ordered him to sluice down the floor. By nightfall the cellar would be lit by candles and adorned by sprigs of holly left in lieu of flowers, their bloodred berries an unintended and ironic reminder of Mary’s violent death.

  The Queen was right to be worried: people would now be whispering that the devil roamed the court, meting out retribution for its excesses, its licentiousness, its extravagant wealth. If not superstition, then envy masquerading as moral outrage would fan the flames of discontent, and with it would come sedition. In England, the Puritans were the most vociferous in their condemnation of the Queen, claiming she was idolatrous in her religious practice, that as an inveterate dancer of the sexually charged volta, she was on the path to perdition, that she was too lax when it came to all manner of satanic revelries such as the theater and masques. And they held as proof of her degeneracy her lack of an heir to succeed her, saying that in the fullness of time God would wipe the ungodly Tudors from the face of the earth.

  This last troubled the Queen the most, for it was true: she was now too old to bear a child even if she married. Mary, Queen of Scots, was next in line to the throne, yet Elizabeth feared the power of Rome, feared its support for Spain and its willingness to use the Jesuits to foment treason. She had seen what her sister had done; from her prison in the Tower, she had smelled the greasy pall of charred flesh that had hung over London like a shroud, so many did Bloody Mary consign to the flames. Next in line after the imprisoned Scottish Queen was her young son, James. Taken from his mother when a baby and raised in the new religion by Calvinist lords, he was the messiah for whom the Puritans longed. In the meantime, they used any excuse to pillory the Queen, and the murders of her ladies-in-waiting would be ideal fodder for their seditious pamphlets, published on underground presses or smuggled illegally from Holland. What better proof that Elizabeth was a Jezebel than to show her ladies as such?

  * * *

  His head in his hands, Hector at his feet, Nick sat beside the body in the crypt, on the lid of a cracked sarcophagus of a long-forgotten minor royal. He was responsible for Mary’s death. He should have seen something, heard something during the night. If only he hadn’t let Hector sleep beside him under the covers, the dog’s acute sense of hearing would have picked up the sound of Mary’s footsteps as she sped along the corridors, down the stairs, and out into the night. The thing that puzzled Nick the most was why she had been killed in the cellar instead of outside. Under cover of darkness, the pleasure gardens and tiltyard empty of witnesses, the killer would have gone undetected. Had Mary escaped his clutches and run back to the palace seeking help? But then why was she killed in the act of stealing a flagon of wine? This was not something she would do if she was in fear for her life. Most likely Mary had either allowed the killer to escort her back to the palace, as any gentleman should have done despite the argument, or he had secretly followed her and then murdered her.

  Most of all, Nick blamed himself for not insisting the Queen send her ladies back to their country homes immediately after Cecily’s death. Mary would be alive now if not for his criminal incompetence. It was freezing in the crypt, but even so, the body was beginning to give off a disturbingly meaty odor like the smell of a butcher’s stall in the market.

  Nick heard footsteps and looked up. He was startled to see Rivkah instead of Eli. The Queen must have sent for Eli by royal barge, by far the fastest way to travel as it was law that any wherries or shipping on the Thames were to give way as soon as the royal pennant could be seen flying, the golden oars of the bargemen flashing in the sun. At full stretch and with a favorable tide, the barge could travel as fast, if not faster, than a galloping horse. He had to restrain himself from jumping up and crushing her in his arms, burying his face in her hair so he could breathe in the living scent of her so great was his relief at seeing her alive after the terror of his dream.

  Nick got to his feet. “What are you doing here?” he said, his tone harsher than he had intended.

  “Eli couldn’t come,” she said. “He’s performing a Caesarian on one of Kat’s women.”

  “It’s not safe,” Nick said, grasping her by the arm. “Didn’t John warn you?” He was appalled, as if his dream were about to come true. As if it had been a terrifying prophecy and they were fated to act it out.

  Rivkah looked down at Nick’s hand, and he let go. “Sorry,” he said, stepping back, trying to beat down his panic.

  “John came by last night,” Rivkah said.

  “You shouldn’t be here.”

  “It’s what I do,” Rivkah replied. Then she turned to the body. She stood looking down at Mary for what seemed a long time. “Eli told me the details of the other girl,” Rivkah murmured, as if to herself, “but seeing …”

  Nick knew what she meant. There was a world of difference between hearing about it and seeing it firsthand. The colors, the smell, but most of all the sad diminishment of a body bereft of its vital spark, a child’s doll discarded and forgotten, limbs twisted, skirts awry, its frozen smile a sad parody of life.

  Lightly, Rivkah touched Mary’s face, an oddly moving gesture of one woman to another, a sort of farewell; then she gently closed Mary’s eyes.

  “What is your opinion of what caused these?” Nick gestured to the scratches on Mary’s chest.

  “Fingernails,” Rivkah said. “See how they are parallel to one another?” She picked up a hand and examined it, then the other. “She fought back,” she said, and her voice shook slightly.

  Next, Rivkah bent to examine the bruising on the neck.

  “Not strangled,” she said. “The neck was only gripped on one side. It would take two hands to choke someone to death.”

  Nick nodded.

  “And the killer is left-handed,” Rivkah added.

  Nick looked at her quickly. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Look here. The bruising is predominantly on the right side of the neck.” She indicated where lateral marks clearly showed the outline of fingers now that the blood was beginning to settle and darken. “But this round mark here,” she touched the front of the neck, “was made by the thumb, the strongest finger in gripping.”

  Before Nick could react, Rivkah turned toward him and grabbed him by the neck with her left hand. “Note where my fingers are placed,” she instructed, “on the right side of your neck. It is the only way the fingers can encircle the throat. And if I could squeeze hard enough, you would have the exact same pattern of bruising as Mary.”

  She released him and stood back. Nick touched his neck, not because Rivkah had hurt him—her hands were too small, her grip too weak—but because his flesh burned where she had touched him. He forced himself to turn his mind to the implications of what Rivkah had just demonstrated.

  He now had a clue to the man who had argued with Mary violently enough to have left the marks of his hand on her. To be left-handed was relatively rare; it was also considered a sign of ill omen as the left was traditionally regarded as the evil side, from the Latin sinistra; children in the schoolroom were forced to write with their right hand by having their left arm tied to their sides. Nick wasn’t remotely superstitious, but in this case he had to own that it was strangely apt.

  Grateful as Nick was to have something to go on, he was acutely conscious that it was not enough to prove that the man who had fought with Mary was the sa
me man who had killed her.

  “Will you help me turn her over?” Rivkah asked.

  Gently they rolled Mary over and placed her facedown on the slab. As Eli had done with Cecily, Rivkah took a quill from her medical bag and poked at the wound on the back of Mary’s head. Nick looked away.

  When she finished examining the wound, Nick handed her the mallet. Covered in hair and what looked like bits of brain, there was no doubt it was the murder weapon; nonetheless, Rivkah held the head of it above the wound.

  “The width is the same,” she confirmed.

  “Could she have fought with her assailant after receiving the blow?” Nick asked.

  Rivkah shook her head. “Not a chance. She would have been unconscious before she hit the ground. Her eyes were still open, although the orbs have rolled upward. A classic sign of deep unconsciousness.” She wiped the quill and put it back in her bag. “We need to turn the body again,” she said.

  Together they rolled Mary onto her back. Like Nick, Rivkah manipulated Mary’s limbs one by one to check for rigor mortis. She confirmed Nick’s timeline for the murder.

  “Sometime between one and five this morning. I can’t be more exact than that, I’m afraid.” She covered Mary’s face with a white cloth she took from her satchel. Nick helped her put on her cloak.

  “You must find whoever is doing this, Nick,” Rivkah said urgently. “If you don’t, he will surely do it again.”

  Nick remembered Kat saying the same thing after Cecily’s death, yet he had been unable to prevent Mary’s murder.

  As if reading his thoughts, Rivkah patted his arm. “You will find him. That’s what you’re good at.”

  “Not good enough,” he replied, looking at Mary’s body lying so still and forlorn on the cold slab.

  CHAPTER 12

  The Palace of Whitehall

  After her examination of the body, Rivkah caught a wherry from Whitehall Stairs. Nick tried to insist on an escort, but she refused.

  “I can take care of myself,” she told him.

  As Nick handed her down into the boat, she paused and looked up at him.

  “Mary’s death is not your fault,” she said. “You know that, don’t you?”

  Nick shrugged. He could not so easily absolve himself. She squeezed his hand briefly, then stepped into the gently rocking boat. He watched as they pulled away, Rivkah a small, shrouded figure in the stern, cloak wrapped tightly about her, hood up. It seemed to Nick as if he were always watching her leave, and he had to resist an overwhelming impulse to call the boatman back and climb in himself so he could leave the palace behind, this place of intrigue and death. He would have liked nothing better than to stroll along the bank with Rivkah, watching the river come to life in the wintry light, to measure his longer steps to her smaller ones, note how she walked with head erect, eyes taking in her surroundings with a kind of fascination as if she were still amazed by this strange country she and Eli had fetched up in, orphans and exiles, members of a persecuted race. Perhaps that accounted for the quietness of her demeanor when she was in public, her impenetrable reserve and the way she always covered herself from head to toe in a cloak as if to hide from curious eyes. He raised his hand briefly in farewell, but she did not turn around. Soon she was lost to him in the misty murk rising from the river, the only sound the chop of the oars rising and falling until they too fell silent.

  An enormous sense of relief that the river now separated her from the killer roaming Whitehall overcame him. And Kat was safe too. But Nick couldn’t shake the vision of Rivkah being literally torn to pieces by a baying mob. He cursed himself for not accompanying her, at the very least sending Hector with her, but she had been adamant.

  “I know how to be anonymous,” she had once told him. “I learned that in Salamanca during the persecutions.” Then she had given a smile of such sorrow, it had torn at Nick’s heart. “Haven’t you ever wondered why Eli calls me ‘Mouse’?”

  * * *

  With great reluctance, Nick turned back to the looming warren of the palace and headed straight for the Queen’s apartments. The only women in danger were the remaining ladies-in-waiting, and he intended to do now what he should have done immediately after Cecily’s body was discovered.

  When he was admitted to the Queen’s sitting room, he was surprised to find her gone.

  “A meeting with the Dutch ambassador concerning the Puritan communities there,” Codpiece informed him. “Apparently they’re inciting the Puritans here to produce scurrilous pamphlets denouncing the Queen as a Jezebel. Good Queen Bess is even now tearing a strip off the ambassador.” The Fool was sitting at his ease in a child-sized chair by the fire, an open book in his lap, his finger marking a page. His voice was the voice of Richard, not Codpiece. Glancing around, Nick saw that the rest of the apartment was empty.

  “She didn’t want you along to make fun of the Puritans?” Nick asked, sitting down opposite Richard. “I’m surprised you could pass up the opportunity.”

  “I wish.” A brief flash of humor before his face grew somber. “She knew you’d come here first. She wanted me to tell you that she’s sending home the rest of her ladies.”

  “Thank God,” Nick said.

  “Except for one,” Richard added. “The countess.” He pulled a face. “She refused to go, said someone should be here to take care of the Queen. They had a bit of a barney about it. Courageous, I suppose, considering there’s a killer on the loose. Or foolish.”

  “A row about sending the ladies home?” Nick asked, surprised.

  The Fool shrugged. “Seems so. All she cares about is the Queen. But when the countess left, she looked like she’d just discovered a turd at the bottom of her porridge pot.”

  “She always looks like that,” Nick said.

  “How true.”

  Nick then told Richard of Mary’s murder, of his interpretation of the scene and Rivkah’s examination of the body.

  “I’m left-handed,” Richard said.

  “I think I can safely rule you out,” Nick said, getting to his feet.

  “Because I’m a short-arse?”

  “Something like that,” Nick said, grinning. “Where are the other ladies?”

  “Packing.” Richard lifted his chin to indicate a floor above. “The countess is supervising.”

  “Right,” Nick said. “I’ll go talk to them now.” He instructed Hector to remain with Codpiece. “Don’t want to frighten the ladies,” Nick said when the Fool raised an eyebrow.

  “Ask them about Hugh Danby,” Richard called after him. “There’s a rumor he and Mary were lovers. He’s the eldest son of Sir Edgar. You’ll have to get the Gorgon out of the room first,” he added, pulling a face. “They’ll clam up with the countess present.”

  * * *

  After instructing a guard to find Hugh Danby, bring him to his room in the palace, and stay with him until he got there, Nick took the stairs to the floor above, eager to catch the women before they left. Multiple times he had to flatten himself against the wall so an endless stream of servants, carrying chests and leather bags, could pass him on the stairs like a file of ants carrying away a picnic. He noted the panic on the servants’ faces, especially the women, eyes looking at him askance, the way the servant girls avoided even the slightest physical contact with him by drawing their skirts aside as they passed. Nick cursed silently: servants were the weathervanes of their masters, and their mood told him that fear and suspicion now stalked the corridors of the palace. Cecily’s death had been bad enough but might still have been an isolated event. Tragic, they reasoned, but an anomaly. With Mary’s death, everything had changed: a madman was on the loose, bent on carrying out whatever mission he had set himself. No woman, high or low, was safe. The urgency of finding the killer was like an iron hoop around his chest, squeezing the breath out of him. Soon there would be wholescale panic spreading out into the city like a contagion. And when people were afraid, they sought someone to blame. The Jewish race was the ancient whipping boy of
Christendom and, more recently, the Spanish. Eli and Rivkah were both. The Queen might fear civil unrest—it was why she had commissioned him—but Nick’s fears were much more personal. Now more than ever, he could not afford to fail. In addition, he couldn’t help but feel as if he were being tested by the Queen, as if his own loyalty, as a member of a prominent recusant family suspected of practicing the old religion, was under scrutiny. If the murders turned out to be related to a Catholic conspiracy to undermine the throne—Walsingham was even now on the trail of the members of such a conspiracy—then Nick’s failure to bring the killer to justice would jeopardize not only himself but his whole family. If the murders were connected to a Puritan plot and he failed to arrest the killer, then he would be accused of Catholic bias. Either way, he felt himself to be in a cleft stick.

  The chamber he entered was chaotic, women frantically packing, others sitting on their beds staring into space, clothes strewn about them as if they couldn’t decide what to take and what to leave. Several of them were in a state of undress, hair loose as if just arisen from their beds. Nick surmised that some of them had been attending the Queen while the others were still asleep. He knew they worked in shifts. There was no conversation, just the strident voice of the countess giving orders and chivvying them, with servants dodging in and out. Nick saw a young woman standing by a small casement window, the bleak wash of light lending her face an unnatural pallor.

  The activity in the room stopped when he entered, women freezing in different attitudes like so many statues—one putting up her hair, pins in her mouth; another shaking out a long linen garment in readiness for folding; yet another fumbling with a buckle on a shoe. He sent the servants out.