by C. J. Archer
"Do you deny it?"
"No, of course not. I was there. I lodged in the rooms next to your father." He chuckled. "Lord, we thought we were in Paradise. Everything so grand, so beautiful. Iza, I hope you see Whitehall before you die. Perhaps Lawrence could take you. There are so many rooms! If we didn’t have escorts, your father and I would have wandered the halls looking for our bedchambers all night. Everything was so opulent! Enormous tapestries of gold and silk on every wall, finely worked and inlaid furniture, silver plate, the library...and the people! You couldn’t move for people sometimes—courtiers and servants running here and there. Ah, Iza." His face seemed to tighten, become younger, and his eyes shone as if he was actually seeing the palace again. "Her Majesty is exquisite. Her skin so pale and clear, her hair like gold, her eyes clever and quick. She sees everything. So when they arrested your father..." he lifted one shoulder, "...I assumed they were right. I just assumed he had done it. Like everyone else, I thought he was guilty because that’s what we were told."
Isabel went still. He could be lying to her. He could be throwing her off the scent the way a conjurer uses clever showmanship to distract from his sleight of hand.
But in her heart she knew he wasn’t. Suddenly, the trepidation she had felt moments before fell away and she was once again with the man who had helped her when she had been at her most desperate and vulnerable. The man she had cared for since his wife’s death, the man who had treated her more like a daughter than her own father. There wasn’t a mean bone in his body. He was no trickster out to trap her in an elaborate game.
She sighed heavily and closed her fingers around his boney hand. She squeezed as hard as she dared. "Go on."
He squeezed back with surprising strength. "Oh, Iza, you have every right to distrust me, to hate me."
"No, I—"
"I shouldn’t have simply accepted the verdict. Of course I knew he wouldn’t do something like that and yet I did nothing to defend his honor. I stood by..." He sank further into the pillows.
"You couldn’t have known for sure." She pulled the bedcovers up to his chin, folding and refolding the edge over. Aware that she was fussing, she stopped, sat back and said what was on her mind. "Is that why you took me in? Because you felt guilty for not doing anything at the time of his arrest?"
Shawe’s eyes closed and for a moment he looked like he’d fallen asleep. "Partly." His eyes opened and they were sharper than before, less cloudy. "Oh, I felt guilt all right, but even more so because of my treatment of him during our stay at Whitehall."
"Why?" Nick asked from behind them. "By all accounts, Samuel had exposed some of your cures in his latest book. Cures that had given you a solid reputation over the years and a stream of customers. If anything, you had a right to hate him."
Shawe’s gaze darted to Nick. He squinted and humphed. "He’s clever that husband of yours. And well connected, I hear. A formidable combination in a young man. You are correct, Sir Nicholas, he did prove that some of my more popular cures didn’t work. And he did it ruthlessly, I might add, belaboring the point in his book and his lectures. That’s why we had a falling out before we met at Whitehall for the conference, as Her Majesty called it. He had told me what he was going to do, out of courtesy to an old friend, he said. Well, you can guess my reaction. We were no longer friends from that moment."
"I don’t understand," Isabel said, confused as to where her loyalties should lie. "Why did you feel guilty when Father ruined your life? He should have felt some form of guilt, not you." Had her father felt any guilt for what he’d done and how he’d done it? Should he? She felt torn. Her father had done the world a service by providing certain proof that some popular cures did nothing, but at what cost? His colleagues despised him, their reputations suffered and friendships were destroyed overnight. Had it been worth it?
"Because I treated him so poorly at Whitehall. I accused him of being a traitor to his profession, to his friends and my family." He nodded slowly, as if his head weighed heavily on his shoulders. "What an appalling choice of words that turned out to be. But it only gets worse, Iza. Much worse. My guilt has only increased since his death because I realized, eventually, that he was right. I’ve become a better apothecary for being exposed by him. I learned my lesson. It was a difficult one to swallow at first, but I have certainly tried to do my best as an apothecary since. I believe I owed it to him to at least try and live up to his high standards and dispense only medicines that are proven cures."
"And you have," Nick said. "I’ve asked around, and believe me, Shawe’s has the best reputation in all of London."
Isabel’s heart warmed to hear him say it. "And did you also believe you owed it to my father to take me in that day I showed up here?"
Shawe nodded, smiling. "Yes. But I also needed an apprentice and I knew you had studied with the best. It has all worked out, hasn’t it, Iza?"
She smiled at him. How could she ever have thought he would deliberately implicate her, or her father? "It certainly has." She held his hand and felt her tension easing.
"Master Shawe," Nick said, kneeling beside her, "is there anything about that time at Whitehall that you thought was unusual?"
"The queen was poisoned and my colleague was arrested as a traitor," he said. "Is that unusual enough for you?"
Isabel raised an eyebrow at Nick. "You did ask."
"Let me rephrase that," he said with a wry smile. "There’s a possibility that Samuel was innocent and someone else planted the poisons in his room that night. Do you—"
"Innocent!" Shawe raised himself up and stared unblinking at Nick. "Are you sure? Dear Lord, poor Samuel. Poor Elizabeth."
"The queen?" Nick said.
"My mother," Isabel said. After her father died in prison, her mother died only a few months later, lost and broken without her husband. She had devoted her life to being an adoring, dutiful wife. Even though their relationship had suffered after her powers came in, she had still tried to please him, perhaps even more so. When he was gone, she had nothing to live for. She had simply ceased to participate in life and so it had ended as abruptly as her husband’s.
"Ah, yes." Nick touched her shoulder and she leaned into him, glad for his strength and solidness.
"So you want to know if I noticed anything that might indicate he was set up by the real traitor?" Shawe said.
Nick nodded. "But as I said, it’s only a possibility that Samuel was innocent."
Did he still not believe it? Strange, considering he had been the one to suggest it.
"It’s just a theory that we’re working on," he continued. "You see it looks like Isabel is also—"
She squeezed his hand hard and he stopped mid-sentence. The last thing she wanted to do was upset Old Man Shawe even more by telling him she was possibly being framed in a more recent plot.
"Isabel is also what?" Shawe asked.
Nick cleared his throat. "Isabel is also very keen to see his name cleared. As am I," he added quickly with a glance at her. "So if you can think of anything that might support the theory, it would be greatly appreciated."
Shawe shook his head. "I can’t. The first I knew of it was when he was escorted away by the guards. Then his room was searched. I didn’t know until the following morning that they’d found poisons there."
"And what of Pullman?" Isabel asked. "Did he see Father being arrested?"
"Yes, and the other fellow, Finch. We all had rooms near each other."
"Tell us about Pullman and Finch," Nick said, still on his haunches at the side of the bed. "How did they react to Samuel’s claims?"
"The same as me," Shawe said. "Badly. Pullman in particular made all sorts of threats against him. Told him he was a country simpleton who should return to the backwater he crawled out of. That sort of thing. Quite nasty it got one evening. If it wasn’t for the presence of the queen’s physicians and other scholars, it could have ended in blows."
"Do you know who the other scholars were?" Nick asked.
&nb
sp; Shawe named a few well-known academics but dismissed them as having any interest in framing her father. "They were innocent bystanders to the conference really. None came under fire from Samuel."
"Then we must focus our attention on Pullman and this man Finch," Nick said.
"But he’s dead," Isabel said.
"That might be worth verifying. I’ve known men to falsify their own deaths to run from the law or responsibility."
She stared at him. He knew men like that? Had he come into contact with them through his spying?
And why hadn’t she thought of falsifying her own death? In many ways it might have been less cruel for Nick to think her dead by some unfortunate accident instead of having left him without explanation.
She dismissed the idea with a shake of her head. That was all in the past. She would not dwell on their separation again.
"What did Finch look like?" Nick asked Shawe.
"Middling height, neither large nor small, brown hair and eyes." Shawe shrugged. "Nice enough fellow with a good reputation I believe. At the time, at least. I assume that suffered in the same way mine and Pullman’s did after Samuel’s book was printed."
"You don’t know?" Isabel asked.
"He wasn’t from London. Nor was I at that time, but I’d not heard of him before and I’ve not heard of him since. His death is news to me."
"Where was he from?" Nick asked.
Shawe frowned as he thought. After a moment of silence, he shook his head. "I can’t recall. Let me think on it, it may come back to me. However I do recall something that may interest you. There was some talk of Rheims."
"Rheims?" Isabel and Nick said together.
"What of it?" Nick asked at the same time Isabel said, "Why is Rheims important?"
"The French city and its Catholic Seminary in particular are known for recruiting English Catholics and other dissenters in schemes against our queen," Nick said. "A great many plots have been orchestrated from there in recent times."
"And how do you know this?" she asked him.
"It’s reasonably well known," Shawe answered as Nick’s mouth opened and shut like a puppet’s without saying anything.
But where had she recently heard Rheims mentioned?
"Had someone been there before the Whitehall conference?" Nick asked Shawe.
"Both Pullman and Finch had made visits," Old Man Shawe said. "Both claimed it was for professional reasons. Apparently there is a well-known doctor there with highly regarded medicines."
Oh. When both men looked at her, Isabel realized she’d said it out loud. She pressed a hand to her lips.
"What is it?" Nick asked, touching her knee.
She shook her head, not wanting Shawe to hear that his son had also mentioned being in Rheims recently. The implications of that made her feel sick. She was grateful when the door opened, drawing the attention away from her.
But then she saw who entered and she felt worse.
Lawrence stood in the doorway, his jaw slack with surprise. He glanced at his father, Isabel and finally Nick. His mouth shut with an audible clicking of teeth and his glare turned hard. "Cozy," he said.
Nick’s hand pressed firmly against Isabel’s knee but he otherwise made no movement. Lawrence straightened, jerking his chin up which made the elegant feathers in his hat quiver.
"I think there’s something you should know," Nick said, standing, his hand resting on Isabel’s shoulder. At the sharp rise of Lawrence’s brows, Nick turned to her. "Perhaps this will be best coming from you."
She didn’t think it would be better coming from anyone, but he was right. She should be the one to tell Lawrence of her marital status since it was her deception. "Nick and I are married," she said bluntly. She always found the direct, honest approach worked best in awkward situations.
Lawrence blanched, began to laugh in a slightly maniacal way then stopped when he noticed no one laughed with him. "That was a fast courtship. You only just met her."
"You don’t understand," she said.
Before she could continue, he went on: "And you married him even knowing about his...," Lawrence glanced at Nick’s nether regions, "...malfunction? Well, if that’s what you’re looking for in a man then it’s no wonder you and I weren’t suited."
"It functions perfectly well," Nick growled. "Tell him Isabel."
"Lawrence, please," she said, "there’s been a misunderstanding."
Nick puffed out his chest. "There certainly has."
Isabel rolled her eyes. Why didn’t they just beat each other up and get it over with? "I mean," she said with a silencing glare at Nick, "that we have been married for some time."
"Eight years this May."
"But..." Lawrence frowned, "...you’ve been living here for some time and I’ve never seen this fellow until the other day."
"Nick and I were estranged for a while," she said. "We’re together again now." That’s all he needed to know. All she would ever say to anyone on the matter.
"But..." Lawrence shook his head and Isabel knew what he must be thinking, all the questions he must be wanting answers to. But the only question he did ask was directed at his father. "Did you know?"
"I knew she was married, yes," Lawrence Shawe Senior said. "I also knew Camm was her maiden name and Merritt her married name. I didn’t know why they were estranged or that her husband had reappeared. But he has, and now we must deal with the consequences."
The response had been directed to his son, but it resonated with Isabel too. The consequences. For Lawrence, it meant that she wasn’t a potential wife or lover. Not that he had ever proposed but she suspected he harbored feelings for her and some sort of plan in that direction had lately begun to occupy his mind.
But there were other consequences which she didn’t think Lawrence had yet considered, although his father had. Just as she had.
"But he is a knight of the realm," the younger Shawe said. "And she is..."
"Yes," Nick prompted with a menacing undertone.
"Your assistant," he said to his father while looking straight at Isabel.
For a long time they stared at each other and Isabel felt like they were inside a dark cave, just the two of them with nothing but blackness surrounding them. She saw his emotions imprinted on his face—disbelief, a sense of betrayal and finally loss—and she felt terrible that she had put them there.
Nick’s arm banded around her waist, releasing her from the strange spell.
"When will you leave?" Lawrence asked with a barely disguised sneer.
Hearing the question out loud caught her off guard. She hadn’t had a chance to think through the details yet. Her reunion with Nick was still so new that she had only had time to bask in it. What happened beyond the day, the hour, had not occurred to her.
"I don’t know," she said quietly.
"As soon as she’s packed," Nick said.
She turned to him, irritation flaring without warning. "There is still much to be done first," she told him.
"Of course," Nick said. He smiled down at her but it was weak and uncertain, not full of his usual confidence. "Whenever you’re ready."
She leaned down to the man in the bed and squeezed his hand. "I’ll return later with your supper."
"Let Lucy do it," he said. "You have a lot of other things to do right now." He brightened. "Or perhaps your friend—Meg, was it? Yes, send her. I would like to meet my new tenant."
She laughed and squeezed his hand again as Lawrence spluttered. "You allowed that whore to stay here, Father? But she’s a—"
"Whore?" Old Man Shawe said. "I know. But not a very good one, Isabel tells me. Perhaps she’d make a better apothecary’s assistant."
"Father, I most strenuously object!"
Isabel and Nick slipped out of the chamber and closed the door on Shawe Senior’s attempts to gently rile his son.
"That went well," Nick said brightly. They had reached the bottom of the stairs and he spun round, picked her up and kissed her mid-air.
Then all of a sudden he stopped kissing, dropping her unceremoniously to the floor. She steadied herself then caught him as he swayed.
"Sit down," she said, directing him to the lower step.
He sat and put his head between his knees as ordered. "I suppose you’re going to tell me I’m not well enough to be out of bed yet," he said, voice muffled.
"No, I’m going to tell you to stop talking and breathe deeply." He did as he was told. "Good. Now I’m going to tell you that you should be in bed. I’ll have a pallet prepared for you in Fox’s room."