Arriving at the cottage, she stood discreetly back as husband, wife, and children embraced each other, mixing tears with laughter. Elspeth expressed alarm at her husband's face, which still bore witness to his crew’s treachery, and she would not be satisified until she had bathed his wounded leg twice over. She had not heard of the wreck of the Plover, but as she declared, a sailor’s return is always a miracle to be thankful for, especially when his household is threatened by enemies.
That story came out a little later, while Elspeth stirred the pot and her little daughter set out plates for her father and the family’s guest.
“Stearforth threatened me and the children if I was to say so much as a good morning to you,” Elspeth said to Joan. “For a while he or another man lurked in yonder field, watching the cottage. Once Stearforth came to the door. The very day you came for the first time. He must have followed you.”
“He was watching from the field,” Joan said. “I thought he was a cowherd, for so he was dressed. But it was Stearforth.”
“I’ll kill the man, I swear it,” Morgan said.
Elspeth rushed to her husband’s side and put her arm around him. “Oh please don’t talk so. Let the law take its course. Let God avenge.”
“The law has failed in this case,” Morgan said bitterly. “As for God, He is not above letting mere mortals be his instruments. I could cite you cases aplenty.”
Elspeth said she hadn’t seen Stearforth or the other man for several days.
“That’s because he believes I am out of the country—in France or on board your husband’s ship,” Joan said.
“If word comes back concerning the loss of my ship, he’ll believe you were lost at sea,” Morgan said, eating ravenously, while his children gathered around his legs.
Joan told Elspeth about the discovery of her brother’s diary and about what was written there about the bishopric.
“Yes, my brother mentioned that. He said he had no ambition to be a bishop, but that he would not decline the appointment if it came. He said it would be God’s call, although the queen was His mouthpiece. Stephen was a humble man,” Elspeth said. “No ranting Puritan or would-be Catholic, but of the middle ground. But now I have heard another has been chosen in his place. A good and worthy man, I hear, whom the queen was thinking upon as well before Stephen’s murder.”
“What is his name, this new bishop?” Joan asked.
Elspeth said she could not remember. Her brother had mentioned the name once or twice, but she had not paid that much attention. There had been no need, then.
“Well,” said Joan, “many names are mentioned in the diary. Knights, bishops, great persons. Most mean nothing to me, but no doubt Sir Robert knows them all.”
“Where is the diary now?” Morgan asked.
“At the Rose—where I lay before Stearforth and Mother-well abducted me. I hid it well, if the two of them did not find it afterward.”
“There’s a good chance it remains where you left it,” Morgan said, between mouthfuls.
“Then that’s where I must go and afterwards to Cecil House.”
“But you must be weary unto death after such a mad ride,” said Elspeth.
“And so I am,” Joan said. “But not unto death, at least not yet. This matter cannot wait.”
Morgan offered to escort her to the inn and then to Cecil House. Joan was reluctant to take the good husband from his wife, but then she thought of Elspeth’s warning about the dangers of London at night and accepted the offer.
Within the hour she was mounted on horseback again, her nether parts so aflame with sores she could hardly sit.
Eighteen
Simkins had his joy of the fire he had set and would have lingered to watch the burning shed until the screams of the doomed occupants had ceased, had not the farmer and his wife come to see what the turmoil was. Wanting no witnesses to his arson or to its mortal consequences, Simkins skulked off into the night. By late afternoon of the next day he was walking through the streets of Canterbury as proud as you please. By nightfall he was in Maidstone, where he snatched a purse from a local burgher to finance his immediate expenses, and then parlayed his new status as shipwrecked mariner into a free ride to London in a merchant’s wagon, satisfied he had given his former captain and the Stock woman their comeuppence. Simkins was also interested in capitalizing further on what he knew. After the incident in St. Crispin’s churchyard, Stearforth had told him to stay out of London, but with the shipwreck, Simkins believed the case was altered. Besides, he was now destitute and desperate. He was confident that Stearforth who had helped him before, would help him again, glad to receive intelligence as to the treason and subsequent lamentable deaths of Edmund Morgan and the female passenger who had cursed the ship.
From his last employment, Simkins knew exactly where Stearforth was to be found. He went to the house in the Strand, and having the practical wisdom not to march up to it directly, he waited until a servant came out, confronted him, and begged him to carry a message to Stearforth to the effect that a certain old acquaintance from his days at St. Crispin’s waited without with important news. Simkins was not altogether sure that he had not worded his message too cryptically, but he knew Stearforth well enough to know that the man was nothing if not curious.
He waited about an hour in the street outside the house and was about ready to despair when the same servant came out again. The servant said Master Stearforth would meet him at a tavern in Milk Street about nine o’clock and he was to go there directly to await him.
Stearforth came somewhat later than promised, so much so that Simkins had begun to wonder what he should do if Stearforth did not come at all.
Noisy and rather down on the social scale, the tavern was not one of Stearforth’s regular haunts. Simkins could tell that by the look of uncertainty on Stearforth’s face as he came in the door and by the fact that no one greeted the young man familiarly. When Stearforth spotted Simkins standing by the bar, he frowned and waved him to a vacant table in the comer.
Stearforth looked around him nervously and spoke in an urgent whisper. “What the devil are you doing here? Where’s the ship?”
“Wrecked in Dover. She’ll not sail again.”
“My God. And the Stock woman?”
“Dead.”
Stearforth breathed a sigh of relief. “Well, I am glad of that. What of Morgan and the rest of the crew?”
“The crew’s all drowned, but I thought you ought to know about Morgan.”
“What about him?”
“Once at sea, he betrayed you, made friends with the woman. They planned to return to London.”
Simkins fleshed out the details, not mentioning, however, his own efforts to put the ship around.
“I tried to stop him, knowing well your orders. He threatened to have me hanged as a mutineer, but I vaulted the rail, swam for shore with musket balls flying above my head. I gave him quittance, though, later.”
“I thought you said Morgan went down with his ship?” “He escaped. The woman too. But I followed the both of them and knowing their return was contrary to your orders, I thought best to roast them both while they dreamed, or niggled in the straw—I know not which nor could care less.” “You set fire to them!” Stearforth looked disbelieving. “They were asleep in a shed. I shut them in, then set a flame. It was all over in a minute or so, such a volley of oaths and pleas from Morgan you can’t imagine.”
“And from the woman?”
“What you would expect—shrieks and appeals.”
“You’re sure they’re both dead?”
“As dead as Adam and his brethren. No one could have survived such an inferno.”
Stearforth sighed again, drumming his fingers on the table. He stared into the middle distance. Simkins saw he was thinking the matter through, and he hoped Stearforth was not unmindful of what Simkins might deserve for his service.
“This is a turn I didn’t expect,” Stearforth said, “but I don’t see how it works
to our hurt. The ship’s no loss of mine, nor its crew, nor Morgan. The point of the voyage was to get the woman out of the way.”
“Oh, I’d say she’s well out of the way now,” Simkins said. “Yes,” Stearforth said. “Yes, she is out of the way now.” Stearforth smiled for the first time during their conversation and Simkins felt more at ease. He liked his present drinking companion no more than he liked Morgan, but he did have an unerring instinct as to where his advantage lay and at the moment everything depended upon Stearforth’s good graces.
Obviously in a better mood, Stearforth ordered another round of drinks and also some cheese and bread.
“You must be hungry after your ordeal and journey.”
Simkins said he was, by God, as hungry as a dozen men. “I have no employment now that the Plover's sunk and gone.”
Simkins was annoyed that it took a moment before Stearforth got the point.
Stearforth said, “Yes, ill luck, the ship sinking the way it did. But I’m always happy to help a man who’s down on his luck.”
Stearforth reached into his purse and pulled out a palmful of coins.
It wasn’t much, Simkins thought, quickly taking the measure of his companion’s generosity. “What I need, Master Stearforth, is employment, not charity. I’m a whole man, despite the lost eye, and you’ve used me to good purposes before.”
“And will again. You did the right thing reporting this,” Stearforth said. “But keep it to yourself. Just we two will know of it, understand?”
“Oh, I understand perfectly, Master Stearforth.”
“I’ll have some work for you. Come back with me to the house.”
“Is it work of the kind I did before? In the churchyard, I mean?” For all his desperation, Simkins didn’t like mucking around with the dead. He didn’t mind making an enemy of a dead man, but once dead, he preferred to be done with the matter.
“Hush,” Stearforth said, with a look of warning to suggest that even in the obstreperous tavern their conversation might be overheard. “Say nothing about that. But as a matter of fact, I shall be needing your help along those lines. I’ve some unfinished business with that body you dug up, a second grave so to speak, and your help in the project will save me the trouble of explaining myself to some new assistant. Do you get my drift, Simkins?”
Simkins said he did but in fact wasn’t sure he understood. Stearforth must have caught the confusion in his eye.
“I mean,” the younger man said, “that your help is worth that of two men. So you should receive double wages for your pains.”
These were words Simkins did understand. Feeling much better now, he finished his ale. Stearforth ordered another, and then Stearforth filled him in on the details.
Morgan accompanied Joan into the Rose. The innkeeper was upstairs and had to be sent for. When he came down he looked at Joan as though she were a ghost.
“God save you, Mistress Gray. You’ve come back,” he said. Then he turned to look at Morgan. “And this I take it is your worthy husband.”
“A worthy friend, rather.” Joan said, not inclined to clarify her identity or Morgan’s. “I left something of value in my chamber when I departed so abruptly.”
“But your husband and his companion removed it all,” the innkeeper said looking confused.
“Not all,” Joan interrupted impatiently. “As I say, he forgot something important and I wish to retrieve it.”
The innkeeper sent one of the chambermaids to look for the boy, Jack, but there was no Jack to be found. He said he would show her up himself and she should look to her heart s content.
In the chamber, Joan went at once to the hearth and probed the recess where she had concealed the diary, but her fingers felt only cold brick. She turned to Morgan. “It’s gone.”
“Could Stearforth have found it?” he said.
“Perhaps.” She turned to the innkeeper who was standing patiently at the door. “Have you had guests in the chamber since I was here?”
“A merchant tailor from Lincoln,” the innkeeper said. A man and his wife from Bath. No others. None mentioned finding a thing that wasn’t theirs.”
“Why should they?” Morgan said. “Many who find things of value prudently keep their mouths shut.”
“Why should they even look?” Joan added. “The hiding place is not so that one would stumble upon it by accident. The diary was searched out. If not by Stearforth and Mother-well, then by whom?”
“Perhaps they returned since our sailing, found the diary, and therefore could not brag of its discovery,” Morgan said.
Joan acknowledged that this was a possibility but in her heart she knew it was otherwise. Stearforth had asked about the diary but had seemed persuaded after all that she had taken nothing from the rectory. Besides, she was not sure he had time to return to the Rose before shipping her off on the Plover.
“Is there a maid who cleans these rooms?” she asked, not content to abandon her search.
“There is,” the innkeeper said. But she’s been sick abed these three days.”
“Then who cleaned them in her absence?” Joan said.
“Jack, the boy.”
Joan exchanged glances with Morgan. On their way to the Rose she had explained young Jack’s part in her abduction, and her own uncertainty as to the depth of his complicity. Was he an innocent victim of Stearforth, or had Stearforth found some flaw in his character? Jack had a fresh, disarming expression, a guileless countenance. But that didn’t make him a saint, and in truth she thought his superficial appearance would make him an excellent cutpurse.
“Where’s this Jack?” Morgan asked the innkeeper.
“Why, that’s what I would know,” the innkeeper said, seeming to understand that his servant was under suspicion and not eager to be blamed for any wrongdoing Jack might have done. “He’s never been accused of theft, at least before, if that’s your meaning. Yet I’m not against your questioning him. A boy can as easily turn bad as good. That’s been my experience.”
The innkeeper nodded judiciously and smiled, as though anticipating congratulations all around for these sentiments.
“Where does he sleep?” Joan asked.
“In the stable. He sleeps in the loft. But this time of night he should still be here. If guests have luggage it falls to him to lug it and he lugs it back down again.”
Joan asked if she could see where Jack slept. There was a reward to be had if she found what she had lost, she said. This seemed to be a satisfactory inducement for the innkeeper, who offered to lead the way.
The Rose was an inn of medium size, as London inns went. Surrounding its central courtyard were three stories and twenty or so chambers and smaller rooms, and of course its guests often had horses that needed to be stabled and fed. No inn was fully adequate that did not have a stable, often, as in the case of the Rose, beneath the chambers themselves. Thus the guests could ride into the yard, dismount, and hie themselves to bed not a dozen feet above the beasts that brought them.
At the Rose the stable had stalls for twenty or thirty horses although at the present time only half were occupied. The hostler had his own quarters there and when the innkeeper told him what was needed, he obtained a lantern and led the way to the rear of the stable where there was a ladder leading to the loft. The hostler was a sinewy, long-faced man, somewhat resembling the beasts he cared for, with stringy dark hair that hung to his shoulders like a horse’s mane. The loft was full of hay except at one end where it had been cleared away and there was a mattress lying and also a small battered chest with a broken latch. Without seeking anyone’s permission, Morgan went at once to inspect the chest, while Joan held the lantern above him.
“There’s nothing here but old moth-eaten clothes,” Morgan said with a heavy note of discouragement.
“Not even a knife or some other bauble?” Joan asked.
“Two shirts, a pair of patched hose,” Morgan said. “Yes, a belt and two caps.”
“A paltry store of possessions
.”
The innkeeper said Jack was an orphan. The man had employed him for charity’s sake, but the truth was that the boy was lazy and the innkeeper was thinking of sending him off.
“A paltry store even for a lazy orphan,” Joan said, sensing that there was some clue here, even in the absence of any object that might have been called one. She knelt beside Morgan and searched carefully through the clothes. They were even as Morgan had said. There was nothing suspicious here.
Then she said, as though thinking aloud, “Boys always have baubles—things they pick up, small change, a broken knife, a piece of glass. It’s their nature. Such penury as this chest reveals is unnatural.”
“We aren’t even sure the boy found the diary,” Morgan said. He stood and looked at her doubtfully. All the riding, climbing, and kneeling she had asked of him were taking their toll on a man who had been grievously injured only two days before and had spent most of the day on horseback. She knew she owed it to him to forgo her search, to allow him to go home to his wife and children. But she could not give up, not as long as Matthew lay in prison under sentence of murder.
At that moment Joan became aware of someone approaching from the other end of the loft. She looked up and saw it was Jack. He looked startled, but made no move to flee.
“Oh, there you are, boy. Where have you been?” demanded the innkeeper.
“On an errand—for one of the guests,” Jack said. He looked at Joan and his jaw fell slack.
“You remember me, do you?” Joan said.
“You’re the woman whose husband came to fetch you home again.”
“I left something behind in my chamber. A book. It has no value to any other than myself.”
“I found no book,” Jack said with the same innocent expression he had used just before Stearforth and Motherwell had burst into her room.
But she was not to be taken in this time. She went up to him and looked him in the eye. There was a way to deal with dishonest servants and Joan, like any good housewife, knew what it was. One didn’t back down until the accused had furnished evidence of innocence, and to Joan’s mind Jack was far from having done that.
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