A Rustle of Silk: A new forensic mystery series set in Stuart England (A Gabriel Taverner Mystery)

by Alys Clare

  Celia pushed back the hood of her cloak and sat down. She looked up at me. ‘I’ll come back soon,’ she said. ‘Very soon,’ she amended. ‘For one thing, if I go on staying at Fernycombe, I’m going to have to be a bit more sociable.’ She grimaced. ‘Mother’s insisting.’

  ‘It’d do you good,’ I said. ‘Life goes—’

  ‘Life goes on,’ she finished for me. ‘Yes, I know. I get told as much several times a day,’ she added with a wry smile. ‘But now, I need a favour from you.’

  ‘Anything.’

  ‘Come to Ferrars with me.’

  ‘I thought I’d already cleared out everything you want.’ I’d dropped my voice to a whisper.

  She gave me a very loving smile. ‘You did marvellously. But there’s something I keep hidden, and so well that you wouldn’t have found it unless I’d told you where to look. It’s my old jewellery casket, with some rather precious items in it. I’d hate anyone else to have that.’

  I didn’t need to be asked twice. We paused only for as long as it took to gulp down the spiced ale and little tarts that Sallie had brought, then set off.

  We found my sister’s former dwelling cold and deserted. There was nobody there; the servants, I guessed, had all melted away, since there was nobody now to pay their wages, no food in the larder, no master and mistress to minister to. I wondered what had become of Ruth. She, or so I’d thought, had a real affection for Celia. Even that, however, wouldn’t be sufficient to keep her in a damp, empty house where there was nothing to eat and which quite soon would be inhabited by strangers. What would be the point?

  I waited in the hall while Celia went up to her room to fetch her casket. She was gone for some time, and I was beginning to be concerned – had she been overcome by grief? Had revisiting the room and the very bed she’d shared with her adored husband proved too much? – when I heard her calling me.

  I raced up the stairs and through a succession of other rooms into her bedchamber. She was kneeling before the empty hearth, clutching the brass-bound oak casket that my father had given her when she was fourteen and in which she’d kept her treasures ever since. The fireplace had a border of large, decorative tiles – gaudy things, the colours in my view too bright and unsubtle – and the bottom one had been pushed aside to reveal a deep, shadowy space.

  I crouched beside her. ‘Did you make that very convenient hiding place?’

  She shook her head. ‘No. It was already here, and I discovered it one day when I dropped my thimble. Look.’ She replaced the tile and then reached for some hidden catch on its top edge that released it again.

  I peered into the dark cavity, which was about a foot long and half as much wide. ‘Was there anything in it?’

  ‘Sadly not, other than spiders’ webs and some dead flies.’

  She was looking at me wide-eyed, and I couldn’t read her expression. ‘Your casket!’ I exclaimed. ‘Is everything there that ought to be?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ She waved an impatient hand. ‘But, Gabe, someone else knew about my hiding place.’ She reached under the wide folds of her skirts and handed me a bundle of documents.

  I took them from her.

  I knew straight away what they were, and I guessed who had put them in the cavity. Well, that was pretty obvious. But this new discovery threatened to reveal – or rather confirm – things about Jeromy that it was perhaps best for Celia not to know. Not yet, anyway.

  ‘I wonder what they are,’ I said in what I hoped was a suitably casual tone. ‘Documents to do with Jeromy’s business affairs, probably. Would you like me to have a look?’

  I wasn’t sure if I’d fooled her. She gave me quite an assessing glance, then nodded. ‘Thanks,’ she said curtly.

  I rode with her back to Fernycombe. After kissing me goodbye, she went upstairs to her room, saying that she wanted to go through her casket on her own. My mother and I exchanged a glance and she raised her eyebrows. ‘How do you think she is?’ she whispered as soon as we’d heard Celia’s door close.

  I shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. When I look at her and see that expression of misery, it seems she’s no better. But, on the other hand, she has more colour in her cheeks, and once or twice I’ve seen a fleeting glimpse of her old, happy smile.’

  My mother nodded. ‘Yes. Perplexing isn’t it?’ She frowned. ‘I wish your father was here, because then the three of us could have had a good, long talk, but he won’t be home till late tonight and I suppose, as usual, you’re in a hurry?’

  I had to look away from the hopeful expression in her eyes. I wasn’t in a hurry at all – not in the sense she meant, which was my working life – but I was burning with curiosity to examine those documents.

  I leaned down and kissed her, hugging her close for a moment. ‘I’ll come back soon,’ I said. ‘I promise.’

  Back at Rosewyke, I told Sallie I wasn’t to be disturbed and raced up to my study, where I closed the door firmly and pointedly behind me. I lit a couple of lamps – it was getting dark now – spread out the thick sheaf of documents on my desk and set about trying to make sense of them.

  After quite a long time, I leaned back in my chair and threw my quill on to the floor; I’d had it in my hand primed with ink, in order to make notes on all the things I was going to discover. Only there weren’t any, because, as far as I could tell, the documents contained nothing more than details of payments made by Nicolaus Quinlie to a person or organization in Venice. There was nothing suspicious about that since he traded with Venice, and undoubtedly had many contacts there. The whole collection was just about to join my quill on the floor when I suddenly thought, why did Jeromy remove them from Quinlie’s office and hide them in Celia’s secret place? They were undoubtedly the documents from that almost empty file, for the same crest appeared on many of them.

  My excitement rising again, I had another look.

  The payments went back years. Four times a year, on the Quarter Days, Nicolaus Quinlie paid a substantial sum of money to someone with the initials LN. Did the L stand for that word beginning with Laz? And I was almost certain that the N word would end in -to.

  And this had been going on for a quarter of a century …

  Then I guessed – no, I knew, with utter certainty – that Jeromy Palfrey, so good at winkling out other people’s secrets, had found out something about his employer, and it was something that Quinlie really didn’t want known. Had Jeromy hoped to use the information to put pressure on Quinlie? We knew that Jeromy had overspent wildly and ended up deeply in debt, and, if some of those debts were owed to his stern and unforgiving employer, it must have seemed like a gift from heaven when Jeromy found the documents. How, though, had he known they were so sensitive?

  It was all so tentative; so circumstantial. I felt in my bones that I now knew why Jeromy had been murdered, and who had murdered him, but proving it was going to be nigh-on impossible. I doubted that Quinlie had stuck that terrible blade into Jeromy himself; he’d have employed a killer, and undoubtedly an efficient one, who seemed to have disappeared leaving no trace and no clue, and—

  Judyth’s mysterious foreigner.

  Something was rapping at my brain, trying to get my attention. I made a great effort to empty my mind and still my thoughts, in the hope of giving whatever it was a chance to make itself heard.

  Nothing happened.

  So I tried to give it a little nudge. Sinister stranger, perhaps masked. Hired killer. Venice. Laz … to. Payments made for a quarter of a century to some person, or institution, that had to remain anonymous. A secret that had at all costs to be kept, even if that cost was murder.

  I thought so hard I made my head ache.

  Still nothing.

  TWELVE

  I slept long, deep and dreamlessly; the result of my disturbed night, the blow to my head and the frustrations and anxieties of the day. After a swift breakfast, I called to Samuel to saddle Hal and rode off to see William. It was more than three weeks since he’d had his injury and, although I’d
seen him a couple of times to remove the clamps and the ligatures and generally keep an eye on the healing, now it was time to see if there was any loss of strength in the arm and the hand.

  It wasn’t the only reason for this morning’s visit.

  I found William out in the yard. He was watching over the lad who was washing out the dairy, and it was very apparent that he longed to do the job himself. Suppressing my instant thought – isn’t the dairy traditionally the preserve of the farmer’s wife? – I tethered Hal and strode over to him. ‘How does it feel?’ I asked, indicating his left arm.

  ‘Morning, doctor,’ he greeted me, grinning. ‘It feels good. It’s been driving me mad with the itching, but Black—’ He stopped, blushing. ‘But I’m told that’s a sign of healing.’

  ‘You’re told right,’ I said shortly. ‘If you can leave that boy to his own devices for a short while, I’ll have a look.’

  We went inside the house and William took off his jerkin and shirt. I inspected the wound – it had been a little inflamed, but now it felt cool, and the faint pinkness had gone – and then I put William through a series of movements, steadily increasing the range. Finally I got him to grip my hand, as hard as he could.

  ‘The arm is still weak,’ I said as he dressed again. ‘But I don’t believe there’s any lasting damage. Strength will build up again with use.’ I smiled at his radiant face. ‘Go and take the broom out of that lad’s hands and finish sluicing the dairy.’

  He stopped just long enough to express fulsome thanks, then hurried out.

  I had been aware, as I tended William, that there were others in the house; in the kitchen at the back, I guessed from the direction of the small sounds. I went through to see if I was right.

  Katharine sat at the table and Black Carlotta stood behind her, leaning against the stone sink. I nodded to the old healer, then, addressing Katharine, said, ‘William’s arm has healed well. It will now be beneficial for him to use it, but don’t let him do too much, and send for me if it pains him unduly.’ I glanced again at Black Carlotta as I turned to leave. ‘Good day to you both.’

  I hadn’t gone very far along the track when I heard someone call, ‘Oi!’

  I reined in Hal and waited.

  ‘You can sit up there if you like,’ Black Carlotta panted as she caught me up, ‘but we’ll hear each other better if we’re walking side by side.’

  I dismounted. I didn’t speak.

  After a while she said, ‘I admit I’ve glanced at William’s arm once or twice, although that’s all I’ve done. He said the wound itched like the devil and I told him not to scratch it or he’d have you to answer to, and so should I.’

  ‘And you told him the itching meant it was healing.’

  She shot me a glance. ‘Aye, that too.’

  We walked on for several paces. Then she said, ‘I wasn’t there this morning to see your patient, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking anything,’ I said mildly.

  ‘Katharine’s with child. She’d been bleeding – only a few spots, but, given what happened last time, she was beside herself – and William came for me in a panic at first light.’

  ‘Is she all right?’ I asked swiftly.

  Black Carlotta smiled. ‘She is. Far as I can tell, anyway. I told her to have a restful few days’ – that explained the fact that William had taken over supervision of the dairy – ‘and I said I’d send someone else along to speak to her.’

  ‘Judyth,’ I murmured.

  ‘Aye,’ she agreed. ‘Met her, have you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She couldn’t be in better hands than Judyth’s,’ Black Carlotta observed.

  ‘Trained by Queen Mab,’ I said.

  Again she shot me that assessing look. ‘Didn’t think they knew about Queen Mab in London or on the Queen’s ships.’

  ‘They don’t.’ I paused. Then, since this was precisely what I’d wanted to discuss with Black Carlotta if, as I’d hoped, I found her at the farm: ‘I’ve been to see Josiah Thorn.’

  ‘Ah.’ There was a pause. ‘Told him your woes, did you?’

  ‘I did.’

  She nodded. ‘Then you’ll have no more reeking objects left at your door. Unless’ – again, that sharp look – ‘you’ve attracted the anger of someone else.’

  ‘What does Josiah Thorn know?’ I demanded. ‘How can you be so sure that my having told him will make it stop?’

  ‘Not my secret to tell, doctor.’ Firmly she closed her mouth. I didn’t know her well – I didn’t know her at all – but I realized that pressing her would get me nowhere.

  There was nothing else we had to say to each other. I wished her good day, mounted Hal and, kicking him to a trot and then a canter, rode away.

  The next day – it was Saturday – I had a visit from Theophilus Davey. As I went outside to greet him and invite him in, he said, ‘I’m not stopping – family dinner with my mother-in-law.’ He made a rueful face. ‘I just wanted to say that I think Jarman Hodge and I may have caused you offence when we didn’t pay much heed to your story of the mysterious foreigner, and I wanted to apologize.’

  ‘No apology necessary,’ I said with a smile, deliberately putting to the back of my mind how cross they’d made me at the time.

  ‘And also,’ Theo went on, ‘maybe it wasn’t so unlikely after all, given that it seems that the murder weapon wasn’t made anywhere hereabouts.’

  ‘No?’

  He shook his head. ‘No. I’ve had a couple of men look at it who reckon they know about such things, and they say it’s of foreign manufacture.’

  And Nicolaus Quinlie was a merchant who traded with distant lands, in particular, Venice.

  I met Theo’s eyes. ‘A hired killer would use a weapon with which he was familiar. One made, perhaps, in his own land.’

  Theo nodded. ‘It’s no sort of proof,’ he said quickly, ‘but it may be something we ought to consider.’

  ‘There’s something else to consider.’ I was thinking of the documents I’d found tucked away in Celia’s secret hiding place. Theo frowned briefly, and I remembered he’d said he was pressed for time. ‘But I won’t detain you now. May I come to see you on Monday?’

  ‘Of course.’ He touched a hand to his cap. ‘Until Monday, then.’ He put heels to his horse’s sides and set off back down the track.

  I had thought that by deliberately not trying to puzzle out the tantalizing and elusive little thought that was niggling at me I might allow it room to surface, but it hadn’t worked. In the morning, I rode over to Fernycombe as arranged to attend service with my parents, brother and sister, after which we were all to dine together before Celia returned to Rosewyke with me. The vicar was renowned for his sermons, in which, in the thundering, blood-soaked language of the more violent parts of the Old Testament, he used stories from those colourful books to illustrate his somewhat heavy-handed comments and strictures on contemporary life. Today his choice was the story of Moses and the horrors wrought upon Egypt by God in his determination to win freedom for his people and demonstrate just how far his powers exceeded those of the puny Egyptian gods.

  I have to admit to only half-listening. The remainder of my mind was roaming freely, touching now on that deadly weapon, now on my sister’s widowhood, now on Judyth’s light-filled silvery-blue eyes.

  Boils.

  I shot up straight, the movement so violent that my elbow jerked into my father, sitting stiff and attentive beside me. He shot me an angry scowl, and I muttered an apology.

  Why, I wondered, hadn’t the realization dawned as soon as the vicar started talking about plagues? I could only think it was because in the context of the terrible story of the ten catastrophes the word has a slightly different meaning, one we all know well enough not to give it much thought.

  It was only when we arrived at number six, the plague of boils, that understanding came. Perhaps, without my noticing, the very mention of boils had roused my attention, since I see
so many of them. From there it was a logical move to think of the frightful boils of plague patients; especially as the vicar kept repeating the word plague.

  I forced aside the intense frustration that it had taken me so long and threw myself into examining what had come so suddenly to mind.

  When I was at sea, we voyaged frequently in the Mediterranean and once went right up into the Adriatic, sailing up its eastern coast and putting in at a couple of islands under the control of the Venetians. I forget now the precise reason, but I seem to recall it was to get an idea of how they had set about fortifying their Dalmatian strongholds. On a shore run I fell into conversation with a doctor; a Venetian who, like me, practised his trade at sea. There was at the time an outbreak of sickness on a ship that had arrived from Constantinople, and we were all worried in case the illness was the plague (it wasn’t; it turned out to be food poisoning). This Venetian doctor told me all about how they dealt with the threat of plague in his native city.

  ‘We depend on trade for our very existence,’ he explained. ‘We cannot afford to turn ships away, yet, for our own survival, we must do our utmost to make sure neither the crew nor the cargo brings the pestilence. Our ambassadors in cities with whom we trade are required to report any outbreaks of sickness in order that our city has due warning. Every ship wishing to enter Venetian territory is stopped by the blockade that marks the boundary of our waters, where all documentation is scrupulously checked. If infection is discovered or even suspected, the ship and everything on board, including the men, is removed to an island in the lagoon and must stay there until the danger period is past.’

  In answer to my questions, the Venetian had gone on to describe his work as a plague doctor. ‘The disease is an abomination,’ he said simply. ‘The fortunate ones die within the day. The unlucky writhe in a white-hot heat of agony for perhaps as much as a week. The huge boil-like buboes are the worst torment, for they cause bleeding beneath the skin and whole areas of the body – the armpit, the groin – turn purple and then black. Fever mounts, the sufferer becomes incoherent and death is the only end.’