The Lady of Secrets

by Susan Carroll

  Beatrice reeked of strong spirits and the musky scent of whatever men she had lain with tonight. No doubt she had earned a great deal of coin and was mellowed with drink, which accounted for this rare display of compassion, but Amy hungered for whatever comfort she could find.

  She burrowed her face against her sister’s shoulder. “Oh, B-bea. I have had the most t-terrible day, the w-worst of my life.”

  For once Beatrice did not scold her for being melodramatic as she was wont to do. “Shh, stop your caterwauling and tell me all about it. Your Bea will make everything all better.”

  Between hiccups and sobs, Amy struggled to get out her story. Her head throbbed from crying, leaving her thoughts as scattered as her words and somehow she jumbled it all together, her near capture for thieving the purse, Sir Patrick’s harsh rejection of her, the confusing behavior of Margaret Wolfe.

  “Oh, he was so cruel to me, Bea.”

  “There, there.” Bea patted Amy’s shoulder. “So Margaret Wolfe cured Dr. Blackwood?”

  “Aye, that is what Sir Patrick said before he seized me by the throat and all but spat on me.”

  “That means Mistress Wolfe knew the antidote for the poison.”

  “Did I tell you Sir Patrick called me loathsome?”

  “And she was able to lift the curse from the king.”

  Amy lifted her head from Bea’s shoulder and squinted reproachfully at her sister. “I declare you seem far more concerned with the doings of Mistress Wolfe than you are about the way Sir Patrick wounded and humiliated me.”

  “Oh, the devil take your precious Sir Patrick. Of course, I am more interested in Mistress Wolfe. Don’t you see what this means, you little fool? We need test no further. Margaret Wolfe is Megaera.”

  Clearly Bea’s compassion had reached its end. Amy wrenched away from her. “Of course she is Megaera. Haven’t I said so all along?”

  “And she is obviously possessed of great knowledge and power, just as Granddam always said.”

  “Much good it does us.” Amy sniffed and wiped her eyes. “So far all she has accomplished with her power is to undo everything we did.”

  “Because we have not yet revealed ourselves to her. The Silver Rose does not know she still has devoted followers.”

  “I don’t think that will matter a jot,” Amy said. Usually she tried to be the optimistic one, but never had she felt so low, so completely without faith. “I don’t think Mistress Wolfe cares about being the Silver Rose. Nor will she ever help us with our ritual.”

  “Oh, yes she will. Trust me for that,” Bea began, only to break off. Amy realized the moment when her sister spied her handiwork, for Beatrice’s jaw dropped. She scrambled to her feet. Snatching up the candle, she strode across the room to examine the pentagram Amy had painted on the wall. The blood glistened, some of it still appearing wet.

  Beatrice spun around to stare at her. “What in hellfire, Amy!”

  Amy shrank from her sister’s accusing gaze. “It—it was necessary. I had to do it—to ward off any avenging spirit.”

  Bea’s gaze dropped to the floor. Now she had to be noticing the pile of bloodied rags that had not been enough to scrub away the stains leading to the large wardrobe chest.

  Amy rose trembling to her feet as Bea followed the trail. She flung back the lid to the trunk, the coppery scent of the blood becoming stronger. Candlelight flickered over the body of the wizened old woman crammed inside. Her gray head was bent to an odd angle, making her look most uncomfortable, but it had been the only way Amy had been able to get the elderly tavern owner to fit.

  Mistress Keating stared up at Beatrice with protuberant glassy eyes. Bea was so startled she nearly dropped the candle.

  But she made a quick recovery, steadying the taper as she glowered at Amy. Amy shook back her hair, trying for defiance, but she feared that all she sounded was guilty as she wailed.

  “I told you this was the worst day. But you were so entranced with the mighty Megaera, you never gave me a chance to tell you the rest of it.”

  “I am listening,” Bea said through gritted teeth.

  “After Sir Patrick had been so horrid—”

  “Forget that damned Sir Patrick. Tell me how Mistress Keating ended up in our wardrobe trunk.”

  “Not easily, I can tell you. I have no idea how I managed it. For such a skinny old woman, she was horribly heavy.”

  “Dead bodies usually are. I am less concerned with how she got in there than I am with why.”

  “Well—” Amy’s lip quivered.

  “And if you start crying again, I swear I will slap you.”

  Amy regarded her sister resentfully, but she blinked hard, managing to stem her tears. “Well, by the time I returned to our lodging, I was already that distressed, wasn’t I? And then Mistress Keating pounced upon me. She barged in here, shrieking at me about her missing cat, which makes all this partly your fault, Bea.”

  When her sister only regarded her stonily, Amy gulped and continued. “The woman just kept squawking about her beloved Grimalkin and saying she knew we had done something to him and how she should never have rented a room to a pair of witches like us and—and she said she’d have the law on us and—and—”

  Amy clapped her hands to her head. “I just needed her to be quiet, to stop all her nasty screeching and threats.”

  “So you knifed her to death. Here in our own lodging?”

  “I—I wasn’t thinking clearly. It was Sir Patrick’s fault. He had me so angry and upset.”

  “Sir Patrick! Sir Patrick! If I hear you say his name one more time, I really will hit you. If you were so furious with the man, why didn’t you stab him?”

  “Oh!” Amy huffed. “You think that would have been so much better?”

  “Aye, if no one had seen you do it. But as usual, I am the one inconvenienced, having to clean up another mess that you have made.”

  Amy’s lower lip jutted out. “It is not as though you liked Mistress Keating either.”

  “That is not the point. Don’t you realize what this means, you great lackwit?” Bea slammed down the lid to the trunk.

  “You murdered our landlady, Amelia. Now we are going to have to move.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  THE SARACEN’S HEAD HAD BEEN A REFUGE FOR ARMAGIL Blackwood ever since he had come to London, as good a place as any for a man to lose himself amidst savory meat pies, tankards of ale, boisterous masculine camaraderie, and willing doxies.

  The doctor was known to be congenial company and generous with his purse unless he was too deep in his cups. Then, wary of his temper and his large fists, most men had the wit to keep their distance.

  The dark expression on Blackwood’s face this evening warned the denizens of the Saracen’s Head that the doctor was already far gone in drink. Most of them had the good sense to leave him alone on his bench where he sat slumped back against the wall, his fingers crooked around the stem of his tankard.

  A buxom wench who had been eyeing him ever since he had entered the tavern was the only one who made bold to approach. But a glare from Blackwood and a growl to get away sent her scurrying in the opposite direction.

  He had no appetite for the sort of distraction the doxy offered, a few moments of grunting and groping in a chamber upstairs. He wondered if he would be able to find that kind of release for his pent-up tension ever again.

  He feared not and all because of her. Images kept flashing through his mind of Meg so warm in his arms, her lips so soft as she whispered kisses against his skin, the kind of caresses that could make a man forget himself for more than a few fleeting moments, perhaps for a lifetime.

  Blackwood ground his fingertips against his eyes. Christ’s blood. He still could not believe it. He had slept with Megaera, the infamous witch who inspired other women to run mad, abandoning their babes, their families, to take part in unholy rituals, poisonings, and curses that led to their own destruction.

  The Silver Rose, by her own admission, had possessed un
natural power even as a child. As unthinkable as it was, maybe Graham was right. Perhaps Meg did have him bewitched. Blackwood had never credited such nonsense before, but if she truly was this evil sorceress—

  No. No matter what Graham said, Armagil could not reconcile the notion of evil with Margaret. Not with her healing hands, quiet wisdom, gentle compassion, and understanding that seemed to have its roots in some great pain of her own.

  Now he knew what that pain was, the full depth of her mother’s insanity, the nightmare that had been Meg’s childhood. Even telling him about it, she had looked so young and lost, every bit as much of a victim as all those other desperate young women who had been lured by Cassandra Lascelles’s madness. He ought to have gathered up Meg into his arms and reassured her instead of rejecting her.

  But he was honest enough to admit he had not thrust her away merely because of the shock of learning she was Megaera. Meg might not have cast any spell, but she had certainly done something to him, making him feel too much, remember too much. When she looked up at him, the soft light in her eyes alarmed him. She was falling in love with him and that could only lead to disastrous hopes and expectations. He was not the sort of man any woman could ever rely upon. He had hurt Meg, but truly he had done her a great favor by driving her away.

  “How insufferably noble of me,” he muttered, lifting his tankard in a silent toast to himself.

  Here’s to you, Armagil Blackwood, the only man in London who can make a virtue out of being a coldhearted bastard.

  He drained his tankard and called for another, seeking to numb himself, to drown out the voices in his head. It even seemed preferable to listen to chatter around him, until he started to catch snatches of the conversation and realized most of it revolved around the execution of the priest.

  “Never saw so much blood, not even at a bearbaiting.”

  “So the traitor was still alive when they cut him down?”

  “Oh, aye, although the priest was so purple in the face, I thought he was gone. But old Gilly Black revived him. You should have heard the traitor scream when Black gutted him and shook his entrails in his face.”

  Armagil’s fingers tightened around his mug as he sought to block out the voices and the unwelcome memories that came with them.

  Of shivering in the early dawn near Tyburn, the morning air as raw as Armagil had been in his youth before he had perfected the art of going numb. Of watching Gilly Black check the noose one last time.

  “Pay careful heed to how I have reinforced the knot, lad. It is important, although many hangmen make the mistake of thinking the secret to a proper hanging is all in the rope. But it is a much more precise art than that. You have to calculate with care the weight of the prisoner along with the length of the drop. It makes all the difference between a slow death and a quick one, which is all right for your ordinary thief or murderer. But when the charge is treason, the villain must survive the noose so the rest of his just sentence can be carried out.”

  The old man had actually grinned as he had displayed to Armagil his sharpened boning knife. As soon as he had heard the creak of the cart wheels conveying the condemned traitor to his grim fate, Armagil had ducked behind the tree, retching up his breakfast, much to the old man’s disgust.

  But then he had been only a boy, he reminded himself as he swallowed his ale. Still too fierce in his emotions the way Patrick Graham was now.

  Blackwood flinched when he thought of Graham attending the priest’s execution that morning, Graham, whose heart was already overburdened with anger and grief. If Armagil had been any kind of friend, he would have made more of an effort to prevent Graham from witnessing the gruesome spectacle.

  Just as he should never have let Meg slip away from him with that hurt expression on her face. If he had just cared enough—

  Damn it! He didn’t want to care.

  “Evening, Doctor,” a cheerful voice piped up.

  Armagil looked up from his tankard to glare at the cursed fool who dared to approach him. Albert Dunwiddy beamed down at him, appearing quite oblivious to Blackwood’s foul humor.

  Dunwiddy was a tinker who made his living selling odd bits, many of which Armagil suspected were stolen. He was notorious for cadging drinks in exchange for a bit of gossip or some fantastic tale.

  The last thing Armagil needed was any of Dunwiddy’s prattle about how some fisherman had found gold in the stomach of a sturgeon or the two-headed goose that was being displayed in the poulterer’s shop in Cheapside.

  Armagil fished some coin out of his purse and slapped it on the table. “Take it and go.”

  Dunwiddy’s lower lip jutted out in a wounded expression. “Here, now. I should hope I might greet a friend without being suspected of coming to beg.”

  Armagil lifted his brows. When he shrugged and reached to reclaim the money, Dunwiddy was swifter. He scooped up the coin with an ingratiating smile.

  “ ’Course, never let it be said that Albert Dunwiddy would insult any man by refusing his generosity. I thank you—”

  “Spare me your thanks.” Armagil waved him off. But Dunwiddy was far too dense to take the hint. When he purchased his drink, he pulled up a seat to join Blackwood.

  “I am fair parched,” he declared.

  “Then it would be prudent to give your tongue a rest.”

  “But I am bursting with news—”

  “Which you should keep to yourself.”

  “I attended the hanging of that priest this morning.”

  “I am not interested.”

  As Dunwiddy proceeded to regale him with all the details, Blackwood gritted his teeth.

  “Exactly what will it take to shut you up? Breaking my tankard over your head? If that will work, I can reconcile myself to the loss of a mug full of good ale.”

  Dunwiddy regarded Armagil with injured surprise. “But I thought you would like to know how well your father did. He has lost none of his skills despite his advancing years.”

  “Gilly Black is not my father!” Armagil roared, causing more than one head to turn in his direction. The tavern keeper paused in wiping down the bar, ever on the alert for trouble. Armagil strove to rein in his temper while Dunwiddy raised his hand in a placating gesture.

  “Of course, of course. Sorry, I forgot that you and he are a bit—estranged. You’ll not hear another word from me on the subject.”

  Dunwiddy took a swallow of ale. “Although if I had a father who had risen to the height of his trade, I’d be that proud to call him—”

  “Enough!” Armagil slammed both fists on the table, causing the tankards to rattle.

  Dunwiddy grabbed for his, spluttering, “Have a care. You nearly toppled my drink.”

  “Three seconds,” Blackwood growled.

  “Three seconds?”

  “That is how long you have to remove your carcass from that bench and take yourself elsewhere. Or there will be more than your ale in danger.”

  Dunwiddy sniffed. “Very well. If you were in no humor for company this evening, you should have just said so. But it is too bad, because I had an even better story to tell you. Even though there’s plenty of thieving and killing here in the city, it has been a while since we’ve had anyone tried as a witch.”

  Armagil felt his heart stop. “What!”

  “Ah, so now you are interested.” Dunwiddy gave him a smug grin and reached for his drink. He cried out when Armagil dashed the tankard from his hand.

  “What witch? What is her name? Damn you!”

  “I don’t rightly know. Look what you’ve done, spilled ale all over my best breeches.”

  Armagil leaped up. Dunwiddy gasped out a protest when Armagil seized him by his jerkin and hauled the man from his bench.

  “You had better know and right quick. Who are you talking about? Someone has been arrested?”

  “N-no, not yet. But I am sure it will only be a matter of time before those evil women are hunted down.”

  “There was more than one of these witches?�
��

  “Aye, a whole pack of them or so I have heard.”

  “And what have they done? What are they accused of?”

  “Murder.” Despite his fear of Blackwood’s temper, Dunwiddy licked his lips, clearly relishing the information he had to impart. “They killed some woman, used her blood to paint devil symbols on the walls. The poor wench must have been a mite of a thing because they were able to stuff her body inside a trunk.”

  A mite of a thing? Blackwood’s mind leapt to Meg, who barely came up to his shoulder, whose frame seemed so slight and delicate, he’d half feared he would crush her himself when they’d made love so fiercely.

  The air left his lungs.

  “Her name?” He could barely rasp out the words. “What was the name of the woman killed?”

  “I can’t rightly remember.”

  “Curse you! You had better.” He gave Dunwiddy such a savage shake, the man’s head snapped back.

  “Easy now, Dr. Blackwood.” Armagil felt a heavy restraining hand descend upon his shoulder. He tried to shrug it off, but the owner of the Saracen’s Head only tightened his grip.

  “I realize our good neighbor Dunwiddy here can be a bit aggravating.” Minton’s smile was both placating and carried a hint of warning. “But I allow no brawling in my establishment. You know that, sir.”

  “I was aggravating no one,” Dunwiddy squeaked. “I was just telling him about the terrible murder those witches has done.”

  “A dreadful affair,” Minton agreed. “Poor old woman.”

  “Old?” Blackwood echoed.

  “Aye, an elderly woman who kept an alehouse and lodgings.”

  “She was the victim?” Blackwood felt able to breathe again. He released Dunwiddy, but Minton still kept a firm grip on Armagil’s shoulder.

  Dunwiddy smoothed his hands over his jerkin. “Aye, that’s what I was telling you before you pounced on me like some mad jack let loose from Bedlam, demanding names, which I tell you I don’t know.”

  “Nor do I know anything more.” Minton peered at Armagil curiously. “Why is it of such import?”