by Mike Ashley
“What! I’ve only been at my sister’s in Richmond! She’s poorly, so I took the other girls . . . no use asking you! I told that cook fellow where I’d be.”
“What cook fellow!” we both asked.
“Master William’s cook. Bold rascal that he was, I saw the girls into the carriage then came back for my bag, found he’d been in and gone right up the stairs to your room. Thank God, you were out. Said he’d been sent to invite you to that nidicock’s house, so I said be sure to tell you I . . .”
I asked: “Exactly when did this happen?”
“Two days ago, stroke of noon. I heard the noon clock as he went out, realized I was . . .”
Angharad almost wailed: “Two days ago at noon, I was already with William . . . and you and Master Will the playwrighter. I was cooking, for the cook was . . .”
She pushed past me down the stairs and ran out of the house. I followed. Of course, she was running towards William’s place. I caught her up and said: “No cook would have stolen your papers and not your money, if he was stealing on his own behalf.”
“No. I suppose he thought me a bastard as well as a pauper, and wanted to know for certain, before he married her money. Me, with the blood of Glendower and Mortimer!”
I said as calmly as I could: “To marry a Mortimer could be dangerous, for a cousin of the Tudors.” I told her my theory of the pawn who becomes a queen. “And you have a Queen already.”
She stopped abruptly in her tracks. “You’re being silly. Me a Queen? No one would believe that.”
“People will believe you could be . . . almost anything!” We were nearly at the house. I asked: “Will William be back from the play?”
“I doubt it. Look, it’s a couple of hours off sunset. There were two acts to go, and we’ve been running.”
“Will the servants admit you?”
“Possibly, but just in case, I have a key to a side door, which leads directly to William’s chamber.”
I tried to remind myself that a man’s bedchamber key was the sole dowry of the harlot. Instead, I was pleased at how resourceful she was.
There was an alley beside the house, with a gate opened by the same key which then got us into the side door of the house. This led to a dark, narrow flight of stairs. At the top, another locked door led to a bedchamber, large for a small house. There was a four-poster bed sizeable enough for a man with a mistress, more family portraits, but otherwise it was sparsely furnished. There was nothing that could have been the lead box.
She said: “Over there is the door to his study. I wonder if it’s locked.”
It was, but I was so enraged by the nidicock’s treachery that I ran at it with my shoulder and burst it open. Beyond was an airy room facing south. There were shelves of books and a large desk, on which rested a copy of an ancient bust and two lead caskets, both decorated with a knot pattern like that on Angharad’s rug.
She gave a little cry and pushed past me. The larger casket was open, and half-filled with documents, mostly in Latin. The smaller was closed, but I could see that the seal had recently been broken. A corner of a document poked out. I said: “Will you read it?”
Without a word, she opened the casket and carefully removed the document. I said: “Is it the will of Owen Glendower?”
“I don’t think so. It’s in Welsh. Oh, it’s a statement, sworn in front of two foreign bishops when he was in exile, by Meredith Tudor. That’s one of the Tudors who were Owen’s cousins.”
She started to read, translating as she went: “ ‘I Meredith Tudor was once a squire to Henry IV, as my son is to Henry V. I give this statement to two bishops, to be opened in the event of great peril to my family, and also to my cousin Katherine, daughter of Glendower, to use as she sees fit. For Katie was married to Edmund, one of the Mortimers King Henry deprived of succession rights. She bore him three children who all died . . .” Oh, this is not what I expected.”
She steeled herself and read on: “ ‘At the time of her husband’s death, she conceived of another child, against her will, by an English knight whose name is black and unworthy to live even in infamy. But the child lived, and she named him Lionel ap Edmund, after her boy who died.
“Now from exile I have written to King Henry, asking protection for my family, and for Owen Glendower, his daughter, and her son, as long as I keep them in hiding, and they make no more wars. I have reminded him of the time when I was his squire, and the fastest rider in his retinue. I reminded him of the great ride I made, to the castle where the former King Richard was held, and the sealed message I took, and how the next day it was given out that King Richard had died. I did not tell him where the other copies of this letter were hidden, but I gave one to Owen’s daughter, to use if her father should be taken, or if I should be attacked on returning from exile.’ ”
“So,” I said. “Doubtless that’s how Meredith Tudor’s son got away with seducing Henry V’s widow.”
“At least that seducer married his victim!”
I said: “That letter could give you great power.”
“What! It makes me illegitimate . . . descendant of . . . of . . .”
I was relieved to see that she did not realize the power of knowing that a Tudor had been accomplice to the murder of King Richard. Such power would be too dangerous.
I got her out of the house as soon as I could. She clutched the lead box as though it were a child. Nevertheless, we were only half-way down the street when William rounded the corner in a carriage, accompanied by Walsingham, but not the dark-haired girl. They pulled up at once and William jumped out. He was looking very angry, but on impulse I put a jovial disposition on and said: “Ho! Master William, you’ll be glad to know I’ve helped your lady recover that casket of records she was so worried about!”
As I had hoped, the villain was dumbfounded by this good news. Walsingham leaned out of the carriage and said: “Anything interesting in those records?”
“I’m not sure. My Welsh isn’t good. Do you read Welsh, Master William?”
He shrugged. “Nidicock Welsh. Manx of course.”
“I think this record says, this lady’s family are all legitimate and respectable, apart from one distant ancestor. Welsh nobility, but not English.”
Walsingham invited us all to dine soon, and drove on. William stayed. He looked at Angharad and said: “My dear, why did you leave so suddenly? All London will soon be talking of your marvellous voice!”
She almost screamed at him: “You have stolen my precious . . . my good name! What is to become of me! And you let that . . . puppet-master write your marriage into his play, and you brought your Player Queen to mine!”
He looked genuinely taken aback. “But my dear, if you value the box so much, I’ll have one just like it made in solid gold. As soon as Alice gives birth to her pillow and I have my inheritance. As for marriage . . . I never promised it. But you know, in the days of the Greeks, of their great playwrights, a learned man’s courtesan had far more freedom and respect than his . . .”
“Courtesan! Mistress you mean! I’d sooner be the pillow’s mistress than yours!”
So what did become of her? Luckily, the Player King had observed that her voice carried almost as well from just behind the curtain below the sounding-board balcony. So from then on, the apprentices had to mime some of their songs.
She also sometimes cooks for the players. Sometimes she offers to cook for me. There are times when the night is cold and I sense my father’s spirit urging me to avenge, return to Denmark and avenge, whatever the danger. Then I know I have no use for a woman, wife or mistress.
But there are times when I weaken and let her cook. That warms me, and the nights do not seem so cold, nor cold vengeance so tempting.
A Taste for Burning
Marilyn Todd
Marilyn Todd is best known for her audacious series of mysteries set in the early days of the Roman Empire that began with I, Claudia (1995). For this anthology, however, she wanted to write about someone wh
om she believes was a distant descendant of Claudia, at a time when it was perilous to be considered a witch.
The wood wasn’t dry enough to burn properly. That meant it would be slow, poor little cow. Martin Pepper took a long swig at his flagon and belched. Look at her. Tied so tight to the stake that the bonds left wheals in her already lacerated young flesh. Only a few straggly strands on her scalp hinted at the lustrous raven black hair which had, until recently, swung with heavy sensuality over her shoulders. The bulk of it had been shorn like a sheep.
She had been lively, then, this Alizon Norton. Kicking, spitting, biting, screeching, with energy enough for six as they dragged her away. She had, alternately, cursed her accusers and protested her innocence to God in a voice loud enough to wake the dead in the graveyard. After two days of dipping, of course, her voice had turned to a rasp. After a week of sleep deprivation, Alizon was barely able to mumble her protests and curses. Although it was only after the floggings that they dried up completely.
Martin upended the flagon, the wine dribbling down his unshaven chin. Where was her precious God now? He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Tell me. Where was her God when she she needed him most?
“Burn the witch! Burn the Devil’s whore!”
Faces contorted with hatred taunted the whimpering figure. Faces belonging to decent, ordinary folk. Blacksmith Wilkes. Parson Hardwicke. All the good men and women of Sulborough Green who were gathered here today. Carpenters, apprentices, dairymaids, reapers, everyone had turned out for the spectacle and men, women and children chanted in unison.
“Stop!” Martin Pepper staggered into the crowd. “For pity’s sake, allow the woman to die with some dignity!”
“It wasn’t your cattle she bewitched,” shouted someone from the back.
“Nor your child she cursed to be stillborn,” spat Bessie Nokes.
“I had no pains in my hip until that bitch came along,” someone else piped up.
“And Tom Shaw would not have fallen into his vat of boiling dye,” boomed the deep, decisive voice of the blacksmith. One barrel arm was wrapped protectively around a sobbing middle-aged woman. “Jennet here would still be a wife and not be a grieving and penniless widow.”
“That’s right,” snarled the wheelwright. “So piss off, you drunken old sod.”
Roughly he pushed Martin away and instantly the rest of the crowd followed his lead, spinning the old man from one to another, their jeers of derision ringing dizzy in his ears. With a final push, Pepper was sent sprawling into the middens. He heard his flagon crack. Saw the last few dregs of his wine soak into the slime beneath him.
“Burn the witch! Burn the witch!”
The stomping of feet and the clapping of hands now accompanied the chant as the mood of the crowd reached fever pitch. Martin did not understand. A few weeks ago they’d never clapped eyes on Alizon Norton. Now they were howling for blood.
“Burn the witch! Burn the witch!”
Crawling under an elder tree, the old man covered his ears with his hands and was almost glad when the order finally came.
“Light the fire, constable.”
Martin Pepper noticed the constable’s hesitation, his obvious distaste at the task. But the voice of Sir Jeremy Farrell did not brook disobedience. Shuffling backwards under the overhang of the branches, Martin watched as a burning brand was stuffed into the pile of branches and twigs around Alizon Norton. He was right. The wood was too green to burn properly. Thick black oily smoke began to swirl upwards, with no breeze to carry it away. The old man blew his nose with his fingers as twigs began to take hold and crackle. He hoped the poor bitch would take with her into the next world not the hatred and bigotry of Sulborough Green, but the beauty and serenity of these rolling Sussex downlands. That her last living moments would capture once again the exquisite song of the warbler in the apple tree, the dance of the river, the scent of the honeysuckle which scrambled over the hedgerows.
As the flames finally began to lick at Alizon Norton’s bloodstained shift, Martin Pepper clasped his hands together and prayed for her soul to a God who had deserted them both.
Two weeks later, when calm had descended once more upon the inhabitants of Sulborough Green, when men scythed through fields of barley, oats and rye stripped to the waist in the searing heat of the afternoon sun, and when women and children followed behind with their gleaning baskets, and when the air rang with the sound of Blacksmith Wilkes’ hammer, Miller Nokes’ grinding wheel and the tap-tap-tap of the carpenter’s nails, a flurry of hooves thundered down the main street.
Most of the dwellings, Eleanor noticed, were flimsy constructions of clay and twigs with no chimney and no windows, only a single door serving for both entrance of light and exit of smoke. A crew of thatchers was reroofing one of the better cottages, and a man wheeling beans had set his barrow down to chat to a woman with a babe at her hip. Piglets squealed in a sty.
Outside the Thistle & Crown Eleanor pulled her foaming horse up sharp. There were two inns in the village, on opposite sides of the green, but this was by far the larger and more prosperous of the two. The man she was seeking would be in here, not in the Magpie. Behind her, the other three horsemen of her party reined in. Signalling for them to remain seated, she jumped down and left her exhausted horse in the care of a tall, broad-shouldered ostler who smelled of juniper and fresh hay.
“Lovely day, mistress,” the tavern keeper called out.
“Where is he?”
“Who?”
He knew damn well who. Eleanor glanced up the stairs, heard male laughter emanating from a room at the end of the gallery. As she placed her foot on the first wooden step, the tavern keeper laid a warning hand on her arm. The look she shot him would have melted cobblestones and he withdrew his hand as though stung.
“Which of you bastards is Farrell?”
Six men sat around the table.
“It’s you, isn’t it?” She marched across the panelled chamber, stopping in front of a man in his early forties with steel grey hair and eyes to match.
He leaned back in his seat, taking in the wild tumble of auburn curls, the dark flashing eyes, the dusty, if expensive brocades. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure.”
“Nor will you.”
The others laughed. Farrell did not. Neither did Eleanor Dearborn.
He rose at last, and bowed. “Allow me to present the other members of the Sulborough Parish Council –”
She glanced at the heavy oak table. Gaming in taverns was illegal, unless, of course, one happens to be the Justice of the Peace responsible for granting the landlord his licence. Underneath the open window, her exhausted horse snorted softly.
Eleanor swept the cards off the table with one furious stroke. “Your puppet councillors don’t interest me,” she hissed. Coins bounced, spun, rolled into corners, ale from their pewter mugs pooled. “I’m after the man who pulls their strings.”
Chairs scraped back in indignation, voices brayed in protest. Farrell silenced the men with his hand. “Your clothes and your jewels are refined,” he said coldly, “which is more than can be said for your manners. So let’s both of us cut to the chase, shall we? Who are you, and what do you want?”
“What I want, you miserable bastard, is justice.”
“I’m a JP,” he shrugged. “Reproach goes with the territory. If you have a complaint, I suggest you see my clerk.”
“If I have a complaint, I’ll see a physician,” Eleanor snapped. “What I want from you is an explanation. Namely, why you took it upon yourself to chargrill my sister.”
That was on the Monday. By Thursday, Eleanor was no nearer to finding an answer. At least, not a truthful one.
Nor were the lies entirely confined to one side. For a start, since it would not advance her cause any, Eleanor had not given her real name. Sir Geoffrey Dearborn’s distinguished reputation would be well-known even in this putrid little downland backwater – as, indeed, would the knowledge that he’d taken a br
ide thirty years his junior for the specific aim of siring an heir. After seven years in which the cradle rocked only with the weight of the dust, a certain amount of rumour and innuendo would also have filtered through to Sulborough Green. Eleanor’s chance of dredging the truth was slim enough as it was. She could not allow it to be scuppered completely.
Sitting in the lee of the church, beside the very pond that had stretched Alizon’s lungs to bursting point, she surveyed the village. Being neither on the main route between London and the south coast, or on the road which cut across the saddleback of the Downs, Sulborough Green did not prosper from passing traffic. Indeed, the high street was in such a sad state of repair that the deep ruts in July would turn into rivulets of mud with the first autumn rains.
The parish was too poor to hire itinerant workers. Witness the raggle-taggle, chimneyless huts, whose doors today were flung wide to admit as much light and fresh air as they could, but in winter would be a hotbed of stench and disease. Witness the coarse homespun clothing, the darning, the patching, the rags hanging off the backs of the children. By law, the highway surveyors were only permitted to call out the parishioners six days a year for maintenance work and when they did, local hearts were not in the job. At a time when prices were rising faster than wages and rents were soaring, clogged drainage ditches and overhanging hedgerows came second to putting food on the table.
The graveyard of St Jude’s was filling up with men and women literally dropping dead from exhaustion.
Even the church itself had not escaped the run of disaster. When Parson Hardwicke returned from a visit to his bishop in Chichester back in May, it was to find vagrants had stripped St Jude’s of every valuable artefact.
Under such vexing circumstances, Eleanor could see why the villagers sought a scapegoat. Times were hard, nothing was sacred, and when a stranger moved in, Alizon would have been viewed with natural suspicion. The viper settling in their midst. A focus on which to direct their anger, their helplessness, their frustration when things went wrong. In short, they had someone to blame for their troubles.