by Anna Castle
Besides, the hothead pushing the local Puritans toward open rebellion was morally responsible for Leeds’s suicide. He had to be caught and Tom wanted to catch him.
***
As he walked back across the yard, he saw a figure beckoning to him from the window of the master’s lodge — Mrs. Margaret Eggerley, the headmaster’s wife. Her timing, as always, was perfect. Her husband had just left for a week-long journey and Tom was feeling the strain of the morning’s events.
He tilted his head to signal that he understood. He walked at a normal pace almost to his own door and then abruptly dodged into the door to the hall on his right. He jogged quickly up the stairs to the parlor. This part of the headmaster’s lodgings was officially part of the college and thus furnished in a serviceable fashion with plain oak paneling and well-worn tables and benches. Portraits of college notables hung on the walls. A door at the rear opened into the new gallery leading to the headmaster’s private home, which was another sort of dwelling altogether.
Mrs. Eggerley stood before the window that looked down into the yard. She sailed toward him with both arms extended, palms turned, ready to grasp him by the hands. “Oh, Thomas! Tom, Tom, Tom! It’s so good of you to come!” She was a woman fully ripe, thirty or so years old, with abundant red hair, sensitive lips, and creamy skin displayed to advantage. She pulled him close and offered her cheek for a swift peck, bending forward to give him a full view of her well-rounded bosom. The heady scent of rose and civet perfume wafted up. Tom’s groin tightened in anticipation.
“Oh, Tom!” She breathed into his ear, sending a thrill up his spine. “I’ve been beside myself. Quite beside myself, as only you can imagine. Poor Mr. Leeds!” She stepped back, slowly withdrawing her hands from his. Her eyes darted to the stairwell and then the rear door. No servants were in sight, but someone might be just out of view. “And here in this time of anxiety and grief, I find myself bereft. Bereft! My husband felt the need to report this tragic news to the chancellor in person, so he’s left me all alone and comfortless.”
“I am honored to be of service to you, Mistress, in any way I can.” Tom folded his arm across his waist and executed a full bow. The pose had the advantage of extending his leg beyond the hem of his dull gown, displaying a firm, round calf in a yellow stocking.
Mrs. Eggerley’s brown eyes sparkled as her gaze lingered on the leg. Her tongue poked through her lips. “I hardly know what to do with myself. I fear to enter my own bedchamber unaccompanied. What horrors might await me there?”
“I shall see you safely to your chamber myself, Mistress. If you wish, I could administer a soothing draught, if you have any such prepared, and sit with you until you fall asleep.”
“Oh, Tom! Tom, Tom, Tom! You are so good to be kind to a poor old woman.” She batted her lashes at him, knowing full well that he thought her neither poor nor old. Woman, however, she most definitely was.
That should be enough to satisfy anyone who happened to be within earshot. Tom supposed her two small daughters were out somewhere in the company of their nurse and the other servants occupied with lengthy errands. They had the house to themselves.
Margaret glided across the room and through the door to the gallery. Tom followed a few discreet paces behind, enjoying the sway of her skirts. He knew she enjoyed it too, both the swaying and the knowledge that his eyes were firmly clapped on her figure.
The master’s new house was more like the manor of a country gentleman than the home of a humble scholar. The gallery would be most impressive once it was finished. Glazed windows on both sides let in quantities of light. Oak benches had been built under the windows and oak paneling installed between them. This was being painted in fits and starts, the benches and floor protected with sheets of coarse buckram.
They didn’t linger there. Margaret took Tom’s hand again, pulling him so close behind her that her skirts brushed his feet. They hastened down the gallery into a narrow corridor and up a half stair to her bedchamber. She had spared no expense here in her private domain. She’d even had a bow window jutted out, framed with draperies and fitted with a padded bench. She owned two chests carved in the Italian style and a cupboard displaying her collection of silver plate. Her wide bed with its lofty pile of feather mattresses was hung with velvet curtains in a dusky pink that made her red hair look like living flame. The bed was piled with pillows, which Tom had learned to deploy with some skill under Margaret’s expert tutelage.
She had chosen him, Tom later learned, almost the day he arrived. She had seen through the squint hole in her gallery. Another squint gave her a view into the chapel. They were originally made so the headmaster could monitor his Fellows and students unobserved. Now they gave a lonely lady a bit of entertainment and a way to keep in touch with the college since she wasn’t allowed in hall, chapel, or yard.
Once she caught sight of Tom, she knew she had to get to know him better. His golden curls, long legs, and dimpled grin had captured her heart. She also told him, between kisses, that he seemed older than the average undergraduate. Wiser. More mature.
Who was he to argue? She certainly had a gift for arranging these matters. The first time, she had caught Tom’s sleeve on his way out of the hall, asking him to help her move some boxes. After that, she would hang a pink scarf in the parlor window if the coast was clear and Tom would march through the gallery as if bearing a message. The coast tended to be clear two or three days a week. Corpus Christi, like all colleges, ran on a fixed schedule, easy to work around. And Dr. Eggerley was often away on college business.
Tom neglected to mention Mrs. Eggerley in his reports to Francis Bacon. A man had a right to keep some parts of his life to himself.
Margaret led him into her chamber and closed the door, turning the key in the lock. “Gown,” she said.
Tom pulled his gown over his head and tossed it aside.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing him against the door with the full weight of her body, and engaged his lips in a kiss laden with pent-up need. Tom returned it in full, releasing the shock and grief and doubt of the morning. He wrapped his arm around her waist, reveling in her solidity and warmth. And his own strength. He tangled his other hand in her thick hair, pulling out pins and tossing them to the floor.
She broke the kiss with a sigh. “Oh, Tom.” She nibbled at his ear and fireworks exploded in his brain. “I’ve been so worried about you. I know you’re too strong to show it in front of the men, but you can talk to me.” She gazed up at him, her brown eyes limpid. “Tell me everything. That will purge you of the horror.”
He smiled down at her. Perhaps she was right. He told her more or less the same tale he’d told the headmaster and the Fellows. As he spoke, she unlaced his doublet and smoothed it from his shoulders with artful hands. He helped it off with a shrug.
“Was my husband there?”
“Of course.” Tom didn’t want to think about her husband at the moment.
“When you first went up?” Her deft fingers found the opening in his slops and probed within.
Tom gasped. “No, no one was there. Except Marlowe.”
“Christopher Marlowe? He was in the room when you went up?”
“Mm-hmm.” Tom tightened his arm around her waist and walked her backward to the bed. He hoisted her up onto it. She arched back, leaning on her elbows, a pose that thrust her breasts up and out. He bent over her and nuzzled into the top of her dress.
“Did you see anyone as you came through the gate? Anyone in the yard?”
“Only you.” Tom stopped nuzzling and grinned at her. “I’d forgotten. You were standing right on the threshold to the lodge. Were you coming in or going out?”
“Neither, silly boy. Why would I go into the yard?” She tossed her head, giving her bosom a little shake. “I was watching for my husband.”
Then why go all the way downstairs? She could see the arched gate at the north end of the yard more easily from the window in the parlor on the first floor.
Chapter Five
Claiming to hear a noise below stairs, Margaret fairly pushed Tom out the door. He had to finish lacing his doublet as he hurried through the gallery. He didn’t mind. It wouldn’t do to fall asleep in her bedchamber, and now he was in sore need of a nap.
He ought to go to the astronomy lecture in the Common Schools, but he didn’t have the strength to go out. He had lost his tutor today to violent death; surely he could take one afternoon off. He decided to grab a copy of Aristotle’s De Caelo on his way up to the cockloft and read it lying on his bed. Entering his chambers, he crossed the room to the bookshelf leaning between the front windows. While scanning the neat stacks of leather-bound volumes, he heard a scrape and a thump behind him in the vicinity of Diligence Wingfield’s desk.
“Dilly?” Tom had thought he was alone. Usually, his chambermates would speak up whenever someone came in. Any distraction from study was welcome.
A wet snore arose from the corner. Dilly’s desk was tucked under the stairs to the cockloft in the rear corner of the room.
“Diligence?” Tom took a few steps and spotted the boy lying sprawled on the floor behind his overturned stool. He seemed dead to the world but for the noise issuing from his open mouth.
Tom bent to shake the boy’s shoulder. “Wake up!” No joy. He shook harder and shouted louder. “Wake up, Dilly!” Diligence slept on, like the princess in the story, only vastly less attractive.
Tom stared down at him, scratching his beard. What the devil was this about? Why wouldn’t he wake? He looked at the desk for some explanation and saw a green jug and Mr. Leeds’s pewter cup. Diligence must have taken them while cleaning up his puke. Finding wine left in the jug, he’d hidden them behind his books for an after-dinner treat. He’d drunk it too fast and knocked himself out.
Tom picked up the jug and jiggled it. Empty. But it only held about four cups when full. If Leeds drank one and Marlowe another, that left two at most for Diligence. Was that enough to lay a boy his size out cold? Tom’s small friend Trumpet could drink three times that amount and still walk and talk. Not well and not clearly, but still. He sniffed the top of the jug gingerly, trying for a whiff of spirituous liquor. He smelled cheap sack with plenty of honey and ginger, and something bitter underneath.
The snoring shifted into a strangling sort of gargle, raising the small hairs on the back of Tom’s neck. The thought of poison leapt into his mind. Not another death. Not today, may it please you, God.
He needed to rouse this boy at once. He slid his left arm under his torso and hauled him to his feet. He started walking him around Leeds’s table, around and around in a circle. “Come on Dilly, you silly old billy. Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!” He accompanied each command with a little shake.
The chamber door squealed. Steadfast Wingfield walked in with a bag over one shoulder. His other arm was laden with linens and blankets. He gaped at Tom and dropped his burdens to the floor. “What are you doing to my brother?” His hands clenched into fists as he strode across the room.
“Help me get —” Tom started, but Steadfast drove an iron fist into his jaw, sending him sprawling across Leeds’s table. Then he caught his brother around the chest and scowled at Tom with the exact expression of a ram guarding his cote.
“What have you done to him?”
“Nothing!” Tom righted himself and held both hands palms out. “I found him like that, you crack-brained nidget! I was trying to wake him.”
“What?” Steadfast looked from Tom to Diligence and back again. His temper slowly cooled. “What’s wrong with him?”
“I think he’s been drugged. I found him on the floor beside his desk. I think he drank some wine from Mr. Leeds’s jug. What was in it, I couldn’t say.”
Steadfast chewed on that for a while. He and Diligence looked much alike. They both had clear blue eyes and white-blond hair, thick and straight, cut square above the brow and below the chin. Dilly’s cheeks were bare, but nineteen-year-old Steadfast wore a trim blond beard and moustache. He was three inches shorter than Tom’s six feet but stockier through the chest with powerful limbs. His angry expression suited his round face less well than his usual hearty good cheer.
“I don’t like it,” he said at last.
“I don’t either.” Tom worked his jaw and flexed his neck, tilting his head from side to side. All in working order. He wouldn’t forget that punch in a hurry, but for now, there was work to do. “Help me walk him.”
They hoisted the boy up between them, each with an arm around his trunk. It worked better with two; they could hold him so his feet landed flat on the floor. Steadfast began to sing a psalm and Tom joined in. They sang all six verses of “In Thy Wrath and Hot Displeasure” and were halfway through “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” when Dilly moaned and rolled his head from side to side. They walked him around the desk a few more times. Then Tom held him up while Steadfast slapped him lightly on the cheeks.
“Diligence Wingfield!” Steadfast’s voice was stern. “Hear me!”
Diligence’s eyes opened, closed, then fluttered open again. “Steadfast?”
Steadfast held his brother’s face in both hands and looked straight into his eyes. “God is calling you. Wake up!”
The boy drew in a deep breath and yawned it out. His breath stank. “I’m awake, Steadfast.” His eyes slowly focused. His voice was weak but clear. “Don’t tell Father.”
Steadfast smiled at him. “You’ll tell him yourself. He’ll help you wrestle with your gluttony.”
Diligence nodded. Then a thick retching rumbled in his throat.
“Uh-oh,” Tom said. “Quick! The window!”
He hustled the boy to the back of the room. Steadfast thrust a window wide open. Together they tilted Diligence out as far as they could without dropping him and held him while he emptied his belly.
“Poor Dilly,” Tom said as they drew him back inside. “You’re not getting much good from your food today, are you?”
“What do you mean?” Steadfast asked.
Diligence pulled his shirttail out of his hose to blot his mouth. “Yuck.”
“That’s twice,” Tom answered. “He puked upstairs too, when he saw Mr. Leeds.”
“Ah, yes. Poor Mr. Leeds.” Steadfast closed his eyes. Diligence followed suit. Tom assumed they were praying; they prayed a lot.
“I still can’t believe he did it,” he said when they opened their eyes again.
“He must have come to recognize that he was reprobate,” Steadfast said, “and let himself fall into despair. He should have talked to someone. Mr. Barrow is always willing. Or my father. He’s reconciled many a reprobate to God’s will.”
“Maybe that was it.” According to John Calvin, God had foreordained in the beginning of time who would be saved and who would be damned. Nothing you did during your life could alter this predestination — not prayers, not good works, nothing. If you were among the damned, you could mitigate the torments of hell by living a virtuous life. But maybe Leeds had decided that hell was hell and if that was where he was going, he might as well get on with it.
Tom couldn’t blame him. He found the philosophy unfathomable. How could being good not be good for your soul? That was another reason he wanted to catch the seditious zealot. He did not want these fault-finding, fun-hating, hair-splitting Puritans controlling his church or his country.
“How’re you feeling, Dilly?” He smiled at the boy.
“Better. Empty. My mouth tastes sour.”
“Let’s go over to the buttery and get you something.” Tom glanced at Steadfast. “My treat.”
“I’ll toss my things upstairs and join you.” Steadfast settled his brother on Leeds’s stool. “Can you sit up?”
The boy nodded. Tom kept
a hand on his shoulder in case of wobbling.
Steadfast went back and picked up his bag, draping its long strap across his back. He scooped up his armful of bedding.
“You’re moving in?” Tom asked.
“Mr. Barrow sent me to look after the young ones. He thought they might be afraid to sleep in a dead man’s room.”
“You’re going to sleep in Leeds’s bed?” Tom wouldn’t have done it — unless he was drunk and there was money riding on it. A lot of money, after a lot of drink.
“I’m not afraid of spooks and spirits,” Steadfast scoffed. He paused at the foot of the stairs and shot Tom a queer glance. “Once, my father made me spend a whole night in the churchyard to prove to me there were no ghosts wandering about, like those popish fantasists would have you believe.”
“Sounds like fun.” Tom imagined spending a night in a churchyard with his father, Uncle Luke, and a couple of the sailors. “A roaring fire, toasted sausages, those tart little apples roasted with slivers of cinnamon.” He chuckled. “My Uncle Luke tells the scariest stories! He’ll raise the hair on your head straight up.”
Steadfast looked at him as if he were brainsick. “I was ten years old. And alone, with nothing but my cloak to shield me.”
Tom goggled at him, horrified.
Steadfast held his gaze for a moment, his face wooden. Then he cracked a broad grin. “God was with me!” He laughed heartily. “I sang all the psalms in order, over and again. Before I knew it, the sun was up and my mother was fetching me home to breakfast. Now I know in my soul that the spirit moves on to its reward or punishment. It doesn’t wander about moaning and rattling old chains. I’ve got fresh bedding here. We’ll say a few extra prayers at bedtime and sleep the sleep of the righteous.”
It wasn’t until he heard footsteps clomping over his head that Tom remembered how groggy and dazed Marlowe had seemed when he’d first risen up from behind the bed. Then another thought struck him like a blow. How could Leeds have tied those clever knots and balanced himself on a stool after drinking a draft from that jug? He couldn’t have done it, which meant someone did it for him. And that meant Bartholomew Leeds had been murdered.