by S. D. Sykes
I didn’t rush back to our apartment after Annora had disappeared with her bread. Instead, I remained on the parapet for a while, enjoying some brief moments of freedom before I returned to our oppressive rooms. In this stillness I could hear the sounds of the island. The screech of the foxes and the hooting of the tawny owls, alongside the barking of the wild dogs that lived somewhere in the nearby woodland. Their howling seemed quieter and less frantic than usual, and I wondered if they were feeling as melancholy and detached from the real world as we did.
And then, for a moment, I fancied that I could smell something in the air – the scent of a fire. At first I imagined the happy scene of a family gathered about the hearth of a nearby farmhouse, before a different thought came to mind. Was this the smell of another plague house being assigned to the flames? I quickly made my way back down the steps, not wanting to give this notion any more thought. The castle no longer seemed confining and oppressive. Instead it was our sanctuary – somewhere that we could keep ourselves apart from this cruel world.
Chapter Twenty-one
At first light the next morning, I had wanted to organise another search of the castle – this time in the hope of finding the Dutchman’s escape route. I had asked Lyndham to bring along his dog, thinking that the nose of a hound would be useful for this job, but when Lyndham failed to appear at our agreed meeting point by the gatehouse, I went looking for him. I found our handsome knight in the kitchen, arguing with his old adversary Alice Cross.
‘I did no such thing,’ said Mistress Cross indignantly, digging her hands into her hips.
‘Well, where is Holdfast, then?’ asked Lyndham.
‘It’s your dog, Sir Robert. How should I know?’
The pair were so involved in this argument that they didn’t notice my approach at first. ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked, after clearing my throat loudly to get their attention. ‘Why are you arguing?’
As Alice Cross spun round to address me, I noticed that she was wearing a thick woollen kirtle on top of her tunic. She had tied a belt about her waist so that she now looked like a roped sack of grain. ‘Sir Robert has lost his flea-ridden dog,’ she said, ‘and now he’s trying to blame it on me.’
‘It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve tried to hurt him, would it?’ said Lyndham. ‘You’ve always hated that poor dog.’
‘That’s because the creature is always getting in my way, Sir Robert. He steals food from the kitchen. He sits in doorways and tries to trip me up.’ She withdrew one hand from her hip and pointed a finger into Lyndham’s face. ‘Worse than that he shits everywhere.’
‘You let him out, didn’t you?’ said Lyndham. ‘When we left the castle for Hesket’s burial yesterday.’
‘I did not. How dare you accuse me of such a thing? If the dog escaped, then it’s your fault. Not mine.’
I decided to intervene again, before this argument became a shouting match. ‘Let’s just get on with the search, shall we, Lyndham?’ I suggested. ‘We can look for your dog later.’
Lyndham answered this with a long groan. For once the expression upon his face was not pleasant. ‘What’s the point of looking any further, de Lacy? We’ve scoured this castle enough times already. We haven’t found anything.’
‘Hans has disappeared, Lyndham. So he’s either hiding in this castle, or he has found a way of getting in and out without being seen. Either way, we need to know.’
The knight took a deep breath, and then ran his fingers through his hair. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry. It’s just that it’s so frustrating.’ He threw back his shoulders. ‘Where would you like me to look?’
‘Try the cellars.’
‘And where will you go?’ he asked.
‘I want to speak to Edwin again,’ I said. ‘To see if he’s willing to talk yet.’
Lyndham raised an eyebrow, but wouldn’t look me in the eye. ‘I still think that you should let him out of his room, de Lacy,’ he said.
‘I know,’ I answered. ‘But he’s not getting out until he tells me the truth.’
When I unlocked the door to Edwin’s bedchamber, I found the man lying in bed with a blanket about his shoulders. He had only been imprisoned in this room for a day, but the place already reeked with the foul miasmas of the Pozzi in Venice – the dungeons in the flooded cellars of the doge’s palace. I had once been locked in that prison, losing track of time in a putrid, hopeless hell, so I did not welcome any reminders of the experience. I held my nose and then removed Edwin’s overflowing piss-pot into the passageway, hoping that this, at least, would alleviate the stink for a while.
‘Are you the new scullion, de Lacy?’ laughed Edwin, as he watched me removing the pot. ‘You’d make a pretty maid.’ He accompanied this insult by grabbing his crotch.
‘Tell me how Hans got out of the castle,’ I said, ignoring his insult.
He laughed again, before he turned his back to me and pulled the blanket over his head. ‘You’re mad, de Lacy. There are no secret entrances. You’re imagining it.’
‘There must be,’ I said, ‘and you will tell me. Sooner or later.’
‘Just leave me alone!’
‘Very well then,’ I said. ‘If that’s what you want.’
I strode out, locked the door behind me, but then waited in the passageway for Edwin to have a change of heart and to call me back. When I heard no sound from within the room, I picked up the chamber pot again and unlocked the door.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked me, as he lifted his head over the blanket to watch my return.
‘This is yours, I believe,’ I said, carefully placing the piss-pot next to his bed.
Edwin sat up. ‘Take it away,’ he said. ‘It’s full.’
‘No.’
‘Tell Alice Cross that I need a clean one.’
‘Sorry,’ I said blithely. ‘This is the only chamber pot we have.’
He leapt from his bed, running at me – but I was quicker, and had turned the key before he reached the door.
He thumped at the wood. ‘Let me out of here, de Lacy. This is torture. I am the lord of this castle. I demand to be released!’
‘You can come out when you’ve told me the truth,’ I said.
‘You’ll regret this,’ he seethed. ‘When I get out of here, you’ll be sorry. I’ll summon the Royal Judge. I’ll have you hung, drawn and quartered for this outrage.’
I walked away. ‘We’ll see,’ I said.
I was crossing the cobblestones of the inner ward, heading towards the cellars to join Lyndham, when Alice Cross called out my name. She was standing with two of the maids beside the well, as the girls stared at something she was holding in her large hands. ‘What’s that?’ I asked as I walked over to join them.
‘Mary here has just pulled this up from the well,’ said Alice Cross, releasing her fingers to reveal a long key. ‘It’s the one for Lord Eden’s library. The key that’s been missing.’
I took it from Alice Cross, before she had the chance to close her fingers again, and then held it up to the light. The key was cast from iron, with a large, kidney-shaped bow, and a complicated bit, notched with long, symmetrical indentations. It was probably the most sophisticated key I’d ever seen, and could only have belonged to our patron of innovation, Godfrey.
I turned to Mary, the girl who had pulled the key from the well. ‘How did you find this?’ I asked.
‘I didn’t know it was inside the bucket, until I emptied the water out,’ she said nervously, as if I had accused her of a crime.
‘Are you sure the bucket was empty when you lowered it?’
‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘This was the third bucket I’ve raised this morning, my Lord. The key came up with the last one.’
I thanked her and then studied the key again, trying to understand why Hans hadn’t just left it with Godfrey’s body. Why throw it down the well? This troubled me.
‘Can I have the key back now, my Lord?’ said Alice Cross, holding out her palm to me.
&n
bsp; ‘No,’ I said. ‘I think I’ll keep hold of it for now, Mistress Cross. It might be important for my investigation.’
She prickled with indignation. ‘But I look after all the keys in this castle,’ she argued. ‘It makes sense for me to have it, my Lord.’
‘Even so,’ I said. ‘I’ll keep it for now, thank you.’
‘As you like, my Lord,’ she said, pursing her lips and glowering at me, before taking out her frustrations on the maids. ‘Hurry up and get back to your chores,’ she shouted. ‘Stop wasting time standing about here.’
I made a quick exit, turning away to spot Filomena watching me from the window of our apartment. Our eyes met for a moment and I wondered what she was thinking. She stood so still, like a statue. Just staring down at me without making a single gesture of acknowledgment. She sometimes wore this unreadable expression, when she withdrew inside herself, and closed out the world.
Was I being closed out? I wondered, as I ventured a wave that was not returned. When she retreated from the window and disappeared into the shadows, I suddenly felt flooded by all of my old uncertainties about our marriage. Did Filomena truly love me, or had it suited her purposes to leave Venice as the wife of an English nobleman? That was certainly my mother’s theory – that this beautiful Venetian had only agreed to become my wife when she had extinguished all of her other options. But there had to be more than expediency to our union – or so I had always told myself. Filomena claimed to love me, so I had chosen to disregard the story of the convenient marriage. But then again, my mother’s words had a way of working themselves under the skin. Like stubborn splinters, they were difficult to remove.
I rubbed my face with my hands, telling myself to ignore this thought, when I saw Filomena again. She had returned to the window with Hugh. As she kissed the boy on the cheek and then waved down to me, I felt flooded again. This time with love. It came upon me so quickly that I felt a tear form in my eye. I waved back and blew a kiss to them both, but then my feelings of love turned quickly to those of guilt. More than anything, I wanted to keep them both safe, and yet I could not guarantee this safety. As I saw Lyndham striding across the inner ward to speak to me, I could tell, by the look on his face, that he had found no trace of Hans in the cellars. My investigation was stalling. We were no nearer to finding the killer that stalked this castle.
I acknowledged Lyndham and was about to question him, when there was a sudden explosion of noise. Shattered glass and a foul-smelling liquid rained down upon us, as an object fell to the cobblestones and smashed into pieces. We instinctively ran to the safety of the walls, before I looked up to see Edwin’s face looking through a hole in the window of his bedchamber.
‘Ha, de Lacy!’ he shouted down. ‘See how you like my chamber pot! Now for the love of Christ, let me out of here!’
I sped up the stairs to Edwin’s room, followed by Robert of Lyndham, unlocking the door to find Edwin crawling across the floor towards us on his hands and knees, before he grasped at me, like a penitent falling at the feet of a bishop.
‘For the love of Christ, de Lacy,’ he said again. ‘Let me out of this room. You have absolutely no reason to lock me in here.’
Lyndham glanced at me with disapproval, but said nothing.
‘You haven’t been honest with me, Edwin,’ I said, ignoring Lyndham’s silent opposition.
Edwin got up onto his knees, holding out his hands to me in supplication. I noticed that his beard had grown wilder. The spots redder. ‘Please, de Lacy. Let me out. I don’t know anything about these secret tunnels you’ve imagined. I don’t know anything about Hans or these murders. You cannot lock a man in a room indefinitely without some evidence.’ He then turned to Lyndham. ‘Sir Robert. You know that’s true. You know that I’m being tormented in here for no reason.’ He threw himself at Lyndham’s feet. ‘Please, Sir Robert. You are a knight who has served the King. You must stop this crime against a fellow lord of England. My family engaged you to guard us. To offer us protection, not persecution. I beg you. Do not be party to this injustice.’
Lyndham looked at me again, evidently moved by Edwin’s well-rehearsed appeal. ‘He’s right,’ he said. ‘We can’t keep this man locked in here any longer.’
I hesitated for a moment.
Lyndham helped Edwin to his feet. ‘I will vouch for him, de Lacy,’ he said. ‘But Eden must be allowed out of this room.’
What could I say? I had no tangible evidence against Edwin, other than my own suspicions. I walked away and left the key in the lock.
For the next three days we hardly left our family apartment, as it felt safer this way. There were no further signs of the young Dutchman, and no further clues came to light as to how he had escaped – but we still felt his oppressive presence anyway, making us watchful and suspicious. We avoided the Great Hall, taking a cold supper each night in front of our own fire, only venturing out as a group in order to take our daily exercise about the inner ward. Our universe had diminished to the few small steps between our apartment and a central courtyard, where we either looked up at the sky, or in at one another.
On the afternoon of the third day, we were trying, as usual, to keep warm beside the meagre fire in our apartment. Filomena and Sandro were amusing Hugh by teaching him to stitch, but Mother was bored and kept stretching out her legs and then releasing a particular sigh. It was a sound that I knew of old – long and tuneful. It was her way of letting me know that she had something to say.
Filomena recognised the noise instantly and gave me one of her resolute stares, warning me not to be provoked. I did my best to ignore Mother, but when the sigh came for the third time, I could not resist its call any longer. ‘Is something the matter with you?’ I asked.
She sat up, steadying herself by clutching onto the arms of the chair. ‘I was just wondering how you felt, Oswald. Hiding away from this killer with a group of women, children and old people?’ Filomena glared at me again, warning me not to rise to the bait – but Mother had already hooked me.
‘What do you expect me to do?’ I said. ‘Rush around the island in search of Hans?’
‘It’s a thought,’ she said mischievously.
‘I have the best chance of catching Hans by staying here and lying in wait,’ I said.
Mother huffed. ‘I suppose so, Oswald. Though it doesn’t seem very courageous to me.’
‘Do you want your son to die?’ said Filomena, suddenly breaking her own rules and joining the argument.
Mother was caught off-guard, as she was accustomed to my wife staying silent during these discussions. ‘No. That’s not what I said at all.’
‘It sounds that way to me,’ said Filomena, her face forged into a scowl. ‘You’re trying to make Oswald feel guilty about staying here to protect his family. Shame on you.’
Mother’s jaw might have fallen open at Filomena’s first statement, but now it quickly tightened again. ‘I am simply pointing out the truth, Filomena. When this is all over, there will be those who think poorly of my son’s conduct.’
‘I think you need some rest,’ said Filomena. ‘Fatigue has affected your judgment.’
Mother turned to me, in search of some support, but found none. Following this, she rose to her feet and flounced out of the room, before slamming the connecting door.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Filomena. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything, but I hate it when she speaks to you in such a way.’
I was touched by Filomena’s stirring defence, but also troubled by my mother’s words – not least because she had hit a nerve. I suddenly felt the need to leave the apartment and get some fresh air, so I threw on my cloak, and opened the door, only to find Alice Cross waiting in the passageway outside, apparently about to knock.
‘What is it?’ I asked tersely.
She took a moment to answer. ‘One of the scullions has noticed blowflies buzzing about the clockmaker’s chest,’ she said.
‘And?’
She hesitated again. ‘We think there’s s
omething dead in there, my Lord.’
‘Have you looked inside the chest?’
‘Of course we tried,’ she answered, ‘but it’s locked.’
‘What about Pieter de Groot? He has the key, I presume?’
She took a deep breath. ‘No. He says his key is missing.’ She paused again and heaved a long sigh. ‘You should come down and see, my Lord. Master de Groot is very agitated.’
‘Why?’
She wiped her lips. ‘He thinks that it’s Hans’s body inside the box.’
‘And what do you think?’
‘There’s definitely something dead in there, my Lord. Blowflies don’t stir in the winter for nothing.’
I stepped back inside our bedchamber, called for Sandro and then grabbed my thickest cloak.
‘What’s wrong?’ said Filomena, glancing up from her stitching.
‘I’ll be back soon.’
She looked at me darkly. ‘Has there been another murder, Oswald?’
I paused. ‘I don’t know.’
Chapter Twenty-two
We ran into the cellar in question to find de Groot lying across his long wooden chest, as a handful of blowflies circled his head, clearly excited by something.
De Groot looked up as I approached. ‘I told you that Hans was innocent, didn’t I?’ he said. ‘I told you that’s why we couldn’t find him.’ He wiped a tear from his face. ‘He’s been dead all along. Murdered like Lord Eden and Lord Hesket. And you did nothing but insult his name.’
‘Where’s the key to this chest?’ I said, ignoring this gush of accusations.
‘It was stolen from me,’ he said.
‘And you’ve only just noticed?’