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

by Alys Clare

  Without stopping to think, acting purely from the fierce instinct to survive, she shoots out her right hand, the first and middle finger tight together and ramrod-stiff, and pokes them as hard as she can in his eyes: right first then left, and even as his hands swiftly abandon her vagina and her mouth to defend himself, she attacks again, punching up into the underside of his nose with the heel of her hand and then pushing her bunched fingers with all her force into his open, howling mouth. He retches, gags and rolls off her, one hand to his eyes, the other to his nose, now bleeding profusely, and she shoots out from under him and struggles to her feet. She races out of the bed chamber, risking one swift glance over her shoulder, desperate to keep ahead of him, for she is going to fetch her weapon from where she’s hidden it.

  She must not attack him in the house.

  She gathers her torn gown around her, puts on a cloak and she flees. What will he do if he can’t find her? He’ll come flying after her. She must ignore the impulse to hide in some secret corner he’ll never find and go to a place he knows. She is aware of most of the spots where Jeromy goes to drink: the nearest is the sordid tavern down on Old Ferry Quay. There is no landlord there any more, it’s true, but Jeromy and like-minded cronies meet at the deserted tavern when desperation drives them to resort to the fiery and gut-rotting brews that one of their number makes.

  He knows the way there all right.

  She runs down to it. She goes a little further along the river bank and hides, but she doesn’t hide very well – just crouches behind the last of the deserted, dilapidated houses – because she wants him to find her. She must kill him in an out of the way, lonely place where he won’t be found.

  Where nobody will associate his death with her.

  All is very quiet. It’s the dead time of the night and even the most desperate night owls are abed. Even if anyone had been in the old tavern, by now they’ll have either gone home or passed out. The place is in darkness. She watches as Jeromy arrives and briefly tries the door. It’s locked. He walks on.

  She must have made some small sound for suddenly she is aware that he knows she’s there. She gathers up her courage and clutches it to her. Be brave, she tells herself. For just a little longer, be brave.

  She hears him approach. ‘Come out, come out, wherever you are,’ he sings. He laughs softly. ‘I can see you, you fucking whore,’ he whispers.

  He comes round behind the house. He leans a shoulder against its ruined wall, nonchalant, elegant, as if he had all the time in the world. He’s smiling.

  He reaches out and grabs at her.

  She lunges upwards, her weapon held firmly in her hand. The big blade rips into the soft flesh of his belly and she thrusts it upwards, finding his heart.

  He dies.

  He slumps down against the wall.

  She leaves the weapon in place, lifting Jeromy’s hands and carefully placing them round the shaft. She is soaked in his blood; the cloak especially is beyond remedy. The nightgown is already irrevocably marked, although the brown is fading now. The stains are from her own blood, from when she lost the baby. It’s quite ironic, really.

  She isn’t quite sure why she didn’t throw the garment away. She suspects it is because it was the one she wore on her wedding night.

  She creeps home, tears up the cloak and puts the bloody pieces on the fire, small fragment by small fragment, until it’s consumed. She puts the nightgown in to soak. She washes herself, dresses.

  She tidies up the house to remove every last trace of the attempted rape and the ensuing fight. She bathes her cuts and bruises. She decides to wait until they’ve healed before reporting Jeromy missing. He’s often away for days at a time and nobody will question his absence. She’ll leave it about a week. Or maybe more.

  In her mind she begins the process of thinking herself into the guise of a normal, happily married woman who very slowly begins to be a bit worried because her beloved husband hasn’t come home.

  And she waits to see what will happen next.

  There was a long silence in the pretty room when my sister stopped talking.

  In the end it was my sister, not I, who broke it.

  ‘You knew, didn’t you?’

  I looked up and met her eyes. Her face was calm now. All the tension and distress of the past weeks had gone.

  ‘I knew you’d taken the voulge, yes.’

  ‘The what? Oh, the blade thing. Yes, that was me.’ She smiled. Her old smile. ‘What a silly thing to say. Of course it was me.’ Then, anxious again: ‘Does Father know?’

  ‘That it’s missing, yes. That you took it, no. He is persuaded that, by some extraordinary chance, the person who killed Jeromy stole the murder weapon from Grandfather Oldreive’s collection in Father’s barn.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said softly.

  ‘I thought you’d given it to whoever you paid to kill him.’

  She looked at me for a long moment. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t have left it to someone else. I saved that particular task for myself.’

  There was, I reflected with a slight chill, a side to my sister that I had never seen before. I had suspected it might be there – suddenly I realized that with total clarity – but now I had proof.

  I looked at her. She was frowning slightly, muttering to herself, counting on her fingers. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Hm? Oh, just working out who I must see. Mother and Father, of course, and I suppose that means Nathaniel too. Ruth, because she was always kind to me. That vicar who did the funeral, and—’

  ‘Why do you wish to see them?’

  She gave me the sort of look she perfected when she was five, the one that said so clearly, Goodness, surely you don’t need to ask?

  ‘Because, dear Gabriel, I am about to turn – what’s that wonderful word? Metamose?’

  ‘Metamorphose. It means a complete change of form.’

  ‘Yes, I know. Well, that’s what I’m doing. What I’ve done. Now I have to present myself to the world in my new form.’

  I thought I understood. ‘Which is?’

  ‘I’m still the sorrowing widow, horrified at the way my dear husband met his end, but my love for him has been somewhat tarnished by the discovery that he was a liar, a cheat, a spendthrift, and in debt up to his ears.’

  I shook my head slowly, amazed. ‘You had worked it all out, hadn’t you? Every last detail.’ I didn’t know if I was horrified or deeply impressed.

  ‘Of course I had,’ she said shortly. ‘I had to survive.’

  I couldn’t argue with that. And what a battle she’d had.

  ‘I’ll see that big blue-eyed bear of a coroner, too,’ she was saying. ‘He—’

  No.

  ‘I shouldn’t do that,’ I said quietly.

  Her eyes shot to meet mine. ‘Why not?’

  It was, I thought, a moment for absolute honesty. ‘Because Theophilus Davey is a quick-witted and astute man and not easily fooled, even by very beautiful women batting their eyelashes at him.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of—’

  ‘Don’t interrupt. For now, he appears to have reluctantly agreed that the assassin hired by Nicolaus Quinlie to kill Jeromy fell out with his paymaster and killed him too.’

  ‘But that’s good, Gabe!’

  ‘Yes, I know. But note the use of the word reluctantly.’

  She thought about it. ‘Oh.’

  ‘Oh, indeed.’

  ‘Do you think he’ll – er, do anything?’

  ‘There’s not a lot he can do, and I think he’s aware of it.’ We stared at each other. ‘Celia, he knows something is being kept from him. He may even have guessed what it is, although I don’t see why he should.’

  She had gone pale, but now her chin jutted out with new strength and determination and she said, ‘We must never tell.’

  There were all sorts of answers to that. In the end, I just smiled slightly and said, ‘Well, I’m not planning to.’

  The days passed and became weeks. Celia set abou
t her campaign and met with great success. She extended her circle to many of the wives of Jeromy’s erstwhile business associates, and, from what she told me and from her appearance when she returned from such visits, she was greeted with warmth and kindness. And, I dare say, a good deal of compassion, for by now quite a lot of rumours about Jeromy were starting to circulate and hardly any of them showed him in a good light.

  Sometimes I went with her, but more often she went alone. ‘I am on my own now, Gabe,’ she said the first time she made it plain that she’d rather I didn’t go with her. ‘Other people must accept that and get used to it, as must I, and, very nice as it is to be escorted around the countryside by my big brother, it’s not really going to help me stand on my own feet, is it?’

  She was right.

  In any case, I became increasingly busy with my own work. William at the farm, whose arm I’d saved, must have put in a good word for me here and there, probably adding that although I was London-trained and lived in a big house, I didn’t charge more than a family could afford. I think Black Carlotta probably did the same, for on occasion quiet, shy people would turn up on my doorstep, often at twilight, whispering of ailments or wounds that hadn’t responded to hedge medicine and asking my opinion, my advice and my help. Often they didn’t pay with coins at all – I doubted very much whether they had any – but with beautifully presented gifts of food and drink. On one occasion, I was left a stone jar of some innocent-looking but extremely potent concoction tasting of blackberries that gave me the sort of hangover I hadn’t experienced since my days at sea. On another, I was paid with a basket of recently hatched chicks. I didn’t mind. I wasn’t wealthy by the standards of great men but I had enough, which was more than could be said for most people. And I loved my work.

  Celia and I transferred our allegiance to Jonathan Carew, at Tavy St Luke’s, only occasionally worshipping at my parents’ church if we happened to be taking the Sunday meal at Fernycombe. We enjoyed the Reverend Carew’s services. He always provided his congregation with something to think about, although those thoughts were often very far from comfortable ones.

  Celia had made her visit to Jonathan Carew quite soon after she’d first mentioned the idea. It was the one time when she returned to Rosewyke looking distressed.

  I took her hand and led her into the library, where I’d been reading and making notes. I poured measures of brandy for us both. It was evening now, and I was ready to stop work.

  ‘Was he unsympathetic?’ I asked.

  ‘No, quite the opposite.’ Tears filled her eyes and she wiped them away.

  ‘What, then?’

  She took a generous mouthful of brandy. ‘In a minute.’ She paused, took another sip and then said, ‘He’s organized the headstone and it’ll arrive in a month or so. We can’t put it up for a while yet anyway, he says, as the ground has to settle.’

  I waited. I guessed she was talking of practical matters in order to postpone the moment when she told me what had upset her.

  She took a further mouthful of brandy and said, ‘He was so kind, Gabe. He said how shocking it was for a young wife to lose a loved husband, and in such a brutal way.’ She was speaking very quickly, as if she had to get the words out before she broke down. ‘He said I was being very brave and that doing my best to pull myself together and get on with my life was the right thing, even though it was so hard.’ She gave a great sob, putting down her glass and burying her face in her hands. ‘Oh, Gabe, I feel so guilty! He was so compassionate and gentle with me because he thinks – he thinks – whereas of course I—’

  She couldn’t go on, which was perhaps just as well.

  I got up and went to crouch beside her, taking her hand. ‘Was that all he said?’

  ‘Yes. Wasn’t it enough?’ she cried passionately.

  ‘Sssh,’ I soothed her. ‘Celia, listen to me. Think what Jonathan said, step by step. He said it was a shock to lose a loved husband.’

  ‘But I didn’t love Jeromy!’

  ‘You did once, and very much. It was he who killed your love, not you.’

  ‘But—’ She thought about it, then nodded curtly.

  ‘Then he said you were brave, which you most certainly are.’

  She managed the ghost of a smile. ‘Not perhaps in the way he imagines.’

  ‘In many ways,’ I insisted. ‘And then he said pulling yourself together and getting on with your life was the right thing to do, and who could argue with that?’

  She sat back in the chair and picked up her brandy. ‘So – so you’re saying I shouldn’t feel bad about him? That it was all right for him to be kind to me, even though he’d be horrified if he knew the truth?’

  ‘I am,’ I said firmly.

  I thought, although didn’t say aloud, that the Reverend Carew might very well be kind to my sister even if he did know what she’d done. I had a feeling about him: I sensed there was a great deal more to him than met the eye, and I didn’t think it was entirely impossible that his own past had included incidents he would rather put behind him. That he would prefer nobody else knew about.

  And, as regards Celia, he wasn’t blind or deaf and he certainly wasn’t a naive innocent. He’d have heard what was being said about Jeromy, just like everyone else. I thought it was interesting that, in everything he’d said to my sister, he hadn’t mentioned grief and heartbreak.

  Perhaps he had a better idea of the truth than we thought.

  It was a wonderful June. The sun shone with almost too much intensity, the hay crop was one of the best for years, the fields and the vegetable plots gave in such abundance that we knew we’d all be able to put away a good amount of stores for the lean months.

  I made good my undertaking to Tobias and travelled up to Somerset to seek his Willerton kin. When Jarman Hodge had first related the sorry tale of the family’s disgrace, he had said that, although there hadn’t been enough evidence to bring Ambrose to trial, nevertheless he’d been ruined: ‘Mud sticks,’ had been Jarman’s exact words. Well, mud had stuck all right. Ambrose was dead – he had survived for less than a decade after his downfall – and I found his widow, Suzannah, living in a dark, isolated little house with only two ancient servants to look after her. She was crouched with age, sitting hunched beside the fire wrapped in shawls and blankets, for all that the day was warm, but she had retained her wits.

  I told her who I was and why I had come. As gently as I could, I told her what had happened to her daughter. I didn’t go into details: the terrible tale that Tobias had related was not for a mother’s ears. I simply said that she didn’t die when Nicolaus Quinlie said she did and wasn’t buried in that showy, costly tomb. Instead, she had gone to Venice.

  ‘Venice!’ her mother breathed, the old eyes gleaming. ‘A very beautiful city, I believe. Oh, she must have loved it! Don’t you think? Do you think she was happy?’

  I hesitated, trying to remember what Rose’s son had said. ‘I’m sure she was. She was a brave woman, as well as a lively and a loving one.’

  ‘Yes, yes, indeed she was.’ The old woman smiled briefly. ‘But you speak of her in the past tense’ – she’d noticed, then – ‘and so must I assume she is dead?’

  ‘Yes, my lady, I’m afraid she is.’

  She wept a little at that, and I did what I could to comfort her. Later, when I got up to leave, she took my hand. ‘Thank you for coming,’ she said. She added in a whisper, ‘I always thought that dreadful man was lying. He built that monstrous edifice, but I just knew my girl wasn’t lying there.’

  I wondered how she could have been so certain. And I thought what it must have cost her, over the long years, to suspect and not to know the truth.

  I reached the low door of the dark, little room and turned for a last farewell. Suzannah Willerton was staring at me, tears in her eyes but a smile on her face. ‘Rose got away from him, didn’t she?’

  And all I could say was, ‘Yes.’

  On the last Sunday in the month, Celia and I sat in church list
ening to Jonathan preach on the virtues of compassion; on how we should not leap to judge one another, as so often we did, but try to put ourselves in the boots of others, walk a mile and see how it felt to be them.

  Good preacher that he was, I found my attention wandering. I’d been up most of the night with an elderly man dying of lung congestion, and I’d be going back to him later in the day. He hadn’t long for the world and both he and his large family seemed to find my presence a help, even though there was little I could do for him now.

  My wandering glance was arrested by a worn old plaque set in the wall to my right, on which there was a familiar name: Gillard. It was the name of my mother’s family. This ancestor was called Henry and he had lived from 1182 to 1240. A life span of fifty-eight years, then. Not bad for his times; not bad, I thought with a smile, for my times.

  I wondered what his life had been like, this Henry Gillard. He seemed to have moved away from the family home at Fernycombe, or else he’d have been buried in the church there. He must have achieved some sort of fame, to have been accorded a plaque on the church wall …

  What had he done? What had he seen? What experiences had marked his life? I rummaged through my mind to see if I could recall any great events that had occurred as the twelfth century gave way to the thirteenth, but found nothing. There had undoubtedly been strife, battles, wars. Perhaps Henry Gillard had been like me, his descendant, and had no wish to farm. Perhaps he’d gone to sea. Perhaps he’d been a soldier, and fought, like Gelbert Oldreive, at some great conflict such as Agincourt.

  I would never know.

  But I found I liked the idea of Henry Gillard as a soldier. He’d been brave, I decided, ruthless, recognizing when it was unavoidable to offer violence, to take a life.

  I wondered if he was looking down at his many-greats grandson and granddaughter, sitting in this church on a fine June day. Would he understand? Celia and I had both taken life. We’d had good reason, both of us, although I suppose a man of peace would say we should have found other ways of achieving our ends.