by Paul Doherty
Colum insisted on paying the taverner’s fee, drained the dregs from his cup and gestured at Kathryn to remain seated.
‘Mistress, I have a favour to ask.’
Kathryn looked askance.
‘The manor at Kingsmead . . .’ Colum stammered. ‘The floors are rotten, the window shutters broken and the roof has as many holes as a net. I wondered . . .’
‘You wondered what?’
‘I wonder if I could rent a chamber in your house? At least until the manor is fit to live in.’
Kathryn stared at him.
‘I could pay good silver,’ he added.
Kathryn gazed coolly at him. The Irishman looked like a boy asking a favour of his mother. If I refuse, Kathryn thought, I will give great offence, but if I accept . . .? She thought of Thomasina, her resolute protector.
‘Agreed,’ she smiled.
‘Thank you. I shall see Luberon and move my baggage down tonight.’
‘Then, Irishman’ – Kathryn rose – ‘I bid you adieu.’
Thomasina, huffing and puffing, two bundles of long, yellowing rushes under her arm, walked up Ridinggate towards Ottemelle Lane. Rawnose the pedlar was standing at the corner.
‘You have heard the news, Mistress?’
Thomasina looked at the poor beggar’s face. He was a veritable nuisance, but his injuries were so terrible, every time she looked at him she felt a surge of compassion.
‘No, Rawnose,’ she said wearily, ‘I have not heard the news.’ She bought a tawdry trinket from the tray slung round his neck.
‘Well, well,’ Rawnose gabbled. ‘They have hunted the Lancastrians down, their last general, Falconberg, has had his head cut off and stuck on a pole over London Bridge. They say Faunte is hiding in the woods outside Canterbury, and someone else has been poisoned, a merchant. Widow Gumple wants to be the leader of the next parish council.’ On and on he rambled till Thomasina, her arms growing tired with the heavy rushes, just left him talking and walked farther down the street. She saw a man bending over a pewterer’s stall and recognised the fat buttocks of the pompous Goldere. Thomasina smiled, moved the rushes further along her arm and hurried past, making sure the sharp edges of her bundles clipped the well-dressed hose. Goldere sprang up.
‘Ooh! Ooh!’ he cried.
Thomasina stopped. ‘I am so sorry,’ she said breathlessly. ‘I’m in such a hurry!’ And grinning from ear to ear, she walked back to the Swinbrooke house.
Agnes let her in. After Thomasina had told her what gossip she thought Agnes should know, they cleared the old rushes from the kitchen, swept the floor and laid down new ones, sprinkling them with mint and thyme. Thomasina anxiously wondered where Kathryn was. She didn’t trust the Irishman and she was frightened that her mistress might become caught up in the toils of the men of power. She only lent half an ear to Agnes’s chatter until the young girl suddenly went quiet, letting the broom slip out of her hand.
‘Oh, I am sorry! I am sorry!’ Agnes exclaimed. ‘I forgot; a letter arrived for Mistress Kathryn!’
She hurried out to Kathryn’s small chancery office and came back with a piece of parchment, dirty and soiled but sealed with a blob of wax. Thomasina wiped her hands on the front of her gown and fairly snatched it from the girl.
‘I’ll take care of that!’ she snapped and bustled out of the kitchen up the stairs to her own chamber. She locked the door firmly behind her and sat down on the quilted cover of the large four-poster bed, a gift from her father on her first wedding morn.
‘The sights you have seen!’ Thomasina murmured.
She laughed and cried a little, wiping the tears from her eyes. She always did that whenever she sat on the bed and recalled the past. Then she examined the piece of parchment. Something was wrong with her mistress, and these mysterious letters always seemed to make matters worse. Thomasina fingered the red wax. Something was amiss. Something to do with that terrible bastard of a husband, Alexander Wyville. Thomasina had been so glad when he had left a day earlier than he’d planned. She brooded over what had happened. She had taken Kathryn to physician Swinbrooke’s kinsman Joscelyn to stay the night. When they returned Kathryn’s father simply announced Alexander had gone: he had packed his belongings, cleared the money from his chest, taken the sword, buckler and spear he had bought and gone to join Faunte’s levies massing in the fields near St Dunstan’s Church outside Westcliff. Kathryn had never been the same since, whilst her father had begun to sink deeper into a pit of depression.
Thomasina pursed her lips, breathed deeply through her nose, then broke open the seal and undid the letter. She had glimpsed the scrawled handwriting on a previous note, now she flinched at the malice in the message: ‘Where is your husband? Where is Alexander Wyville? Murder is a crime and murderers hang!’
Thomasina studied the crudely drawn gibbet and the long-haired woman hanging from it, followed by the words penned beneath: ‘But silence is golden and the gold can be left, three pieces, on Goodman Theodore’s grave in the corner of Saint Mildred’s Churchyard. Today between the fourth and fifth hour.’
Thomasina screwed the letter up into a ball and hurried down to the kitchen. She looked at the hour-candle. The flame had already eaten away the fourth ring. Thomasina threw the malicious note into the fire and watched it turn to ash.
‘Agnes!’ she shouted. ‘Agnes, come here!’
The young girl hurried up, her thin face tense with the excitement she now felt in the house: Mistress Kathryn going here and there; lecherous Irishmen being invited to supper; mysterious notes; and now Thomasina red-faced and agitated. The maid grabbed Agnes by the shoulder.
‘Listen, girl, you like sugared comfits?’
Agnes nodded.
‘And you’d like a bowl of them?’
Again Agnes nodded.
Thomasina pointed dramatically at the buttery. ‘They are in there, all for you, on one condition. You are not to tell Mistress Swinbrooke about that note! Do you understand?’
Agnes crossed her heart and swore to die if she broke her promise. Thomasina squeezed her shoulder once more and bustled out of the door, whilst Agnes sped like an arrow to the buttery and the reward for her silence. Thomasina hurried down Ottemelle Lane, knocking aside Mollyns the miller, who tried to stop her. Goldere got another shove, whilst poor Rawnose didn’t even have time to open his mouth as Thomasina swept into Hethenman Lane down past the hospital. Above her rose the iron-bound gates, the crenellated turrets and lofty towers of Canterbury Castle, and to its left the tall, elegant spire of St Mildred’s Church where it stood on a small hill above the river Stour.
Although Ottemelle Lane was on the border of the parish of St Margaret’s, Kathryn’s family had always worshipped at St Mildred’s. Old Father Matthews was parish priest, a holy man who had officiated at the last of Thomasina’s marriages; now he had grown too weak to withstand the mighty Widow Gumple who, with her accomplices, intended to make the church her own preserve. Thomasina just hoped she was in time. Whoever was sending Mistress Kathryn those notes would wander into the graveyard, and Thomasina intended to be there. She walked through the lych-gate into what the people called God’s Acre. She crossed herself and said the Requiem for her own parents, brothers and sisters, not to mention two of her husbands and four of her still-born babies, who were all buried there. Thomasina’s usually stout cheery face drained of colour. She looked over to the greystone wall of the church, counting the windows along the northern transept. When she got to number six she looked down and, though the grass was overgrown, she glimpsed the small weather-stained stone crosses.
‘Oh, my little ones,’ she whispered.
She stared round. She must not think of them, otherwise she would cry and crumble, and she had to be strong. She peered between the stout yew-trees, their branches bending to meet the overgrown grass and gorse.
‘If the bastard comes,’ Thomasina muttered, ‘I’ll catch him!’
She strained her ears, but all she heard was the chirping of th
e birds and the buzzing song of the grasshoppers. Beautiful butterflies hovered above the wild-flowers, and once again she thought of the souls of her little babies. Did the butterflies represent them? She drew in her breath and followed the beaten track through the cemetery into the far corner where Goodman Theodore’s tomb, a large weather-beaten marble affair, lay cracking under the hot sun. The tomb was well-known in the parish as a trysting place for young lovers. ‘So many memories,’ Thomasina said to herself. An eternity ago she had met Father Cuthbert here, when he was a novice, not yet fully consecrated to the Church. They had stood over there near the old yew-tree, young and innocent under a hunter’s moon, whilst the stars had winked like jewels against a dark velvet sky.
Thomasina wiped her eyes and moved across to the yew-tree. Its trunk had been split by a tongue of lightning many storms ago. She concealed herself carefully behind it and watched the path to Goodman Theodore’s tomb. Thomasina must have stood for a good half-hour, torn between a desire to catch the man blackmailing her mistress and the torment of remembering the bitter-sweet dreams this place provoked in her soul. Birds swooped and sang above the tombs. A battered tom-cat slipped through the grass hunting for voles and shrews. A young couple came in and lay down on the hot grass, twisting and turning in their passionate embraces. When Thomasina coughed, they rose and scuttled off as fast as rabbits, but no one else came.
At last Thomasina heard the side door of the church open and Widow Gumple came out. She looked so ridiculous in a yellow gown and a high-horned head-dress that Thomasina had to stifle her giggles. Widow Gumple’s fat, vinegarish face glowered around the cemetery, almost as if she suspected someone was lurking there, then she went back into the church, slamming the door behind her. Thomasina sighed. The blackmailer hadn’t come, so she wearily made her way home.
In the yard of the Fastolf Inn just outside Westgate, Thopas, the assassin, sat on a bench warming himself in the late-afternoon sun and watched the stream of pilgrims arrive. He pulled the cowl closer over his head as he hungrily surveyed this new batch of possible victims, feeling a surge of power, like wine, in his veins. He was lord of life and death. He would carry out judgement against Becket’s shrine and the city for the death of his mother. He leaned back, cradling the leather blackjack of ale in his hand, eyes half-closed as he listened to the clatter of hooves, the trundle of carts on the cobbles, the shouts of ostlers and the cries of customers seeking attention. He sniffed the warm air, the pungent smell of horse manure mixed with the more savoury smells from the large cone-shaped kitchen which served the hostelry. A lame beggar hopped like a frog towards the door of the inn. A nun, fashionable in her pink lace-edged wimple, lifted her skirts and thick white petticoats, her little nose wrinkling at the smells. She talked in a nasal French accent to the sister trotting beside her. Thopas studied the woman, arrogant, well-dressed, courtly and refined. There was very little there of the law of Christ or the vow of poverty. A possible victim? Thopas wondered. Then he heard a loud braying voice.
‘Make way! Make way for John atte-Southgate, Lord-High Summoner in the Archdeacon’s court of the Bishop of London!’
Thopas moved on the bench and studied the summoner carefully. A true bastard of Satan, he thought, with his scrawny black hair, pot-belly, jutting unshaven jaw, high rubicund cheeks and the darting eyes of an angry sow. Thopas looked at the fellow’s well-heeled Spanish-leather riding-boots, the costly belt round his beer-belly, his long cloak trimmed with squirrel fur and the ponderous saddle-bags full of writs and summonses. A human kite, Thopas thought: a church lackey who went round digging out people’s sins before summoning them into the Archdeacon’s court: the man who didn’t pay his tithes, the parish priest who had a lady friend, the curate absent from his living. Men like Southgate were paid by the Church for serving writs but they accepted bribes from those who could afford to buy them off.
Thopas’s quarry, John atte-Southgate, threw the reins of his horse at an ostler and, with his saddle-bags flung over his arm, strode into the Fastolf Inn, a man fully aware of his power. He saw the elegant nun shy away and the hedge-priest from Somerset scuttle into the taproom’s darkness like a frightened mouse. Southgate smiled. It had been a good year and he was right to give thanks to the shrine and, who knew, amongst the many pilgrims he might find business. Perhaps a cleric who had brought a lady friend? Or that nun; should she have left her convent? Southgate grinned evilly and he bellowed for wine, the best in the house, totally unaware of the demand made for his soul.
Kathryn arrived back at Ottemelle Lane to find Thomasina poring over the household accounts. Her maid looked rather pink-faced and refused to meet Kathryn’s eyes and Kathryn wondered if she was still sulking over Colum. Agnes brought a stoup of watered ale and slices of white bread laid out on a trencher. Kathryn sat at the top of the table nibbling the bread whilst Thomasina, still studying the accounts, mumbled and muttered to herself.
‘What’s the matter, Thomasina?’
The maid looked up, her brown-berry eyes bright with excitement.
‘Nothing, nothing.’
‘Thomasina, I know you too well!’
Thomasina put down the quill and glared at Agnes, who was peeping round the corner of the kitchen.
‘Nothing’s wrong,’ she said flatly. ‘In fact, we are showing a slight profit. Even more so when Lord Luberon sends us a copy of the indenture and the first payment of your fee. And yes, I, too, have known you years, Mistress, even before your mother died,’ she added, trying to divert the conversation.
‘What was she like, Thomasina?’
The maid sighed. Kathryn always asked this question and Thomasina always gave her the same reply.
‘You were a babe, my sweet, but you would have loved her. She was very like you, tall and elegant. Her hair was black as night and her eyes were soft and kind. No man loved a woman as passionately as your father did your mother, he never married again. Never!’
Thomasina stared down at the table and Kathryn wondered for the umpteenth time if Thomasina, this woman of prodigious appetites and deep passion, had been in love with her father.
‘Do you like him?’ Thomasina asked abruptly.
‘Oh, the Irishman?’ Kathryn asked.
Thomasina looked up quickly. Kathryn shrugged and pushed the trencher away.
‘He’s a strange one.’
‘No,’ Thomasina added, quietly enjoying the trap she had set. ‘I meant Chaddedon!’
Kathryn remembered the dark sardonic face of the doctor, blushed and got to her feet.
‘I have news for you, Thomasina. The Irishman is going to stay here.’
And ignoring her maid’s shrill imprecations, Kathryn fled for safety into her writing-office.
Outside in the kitchen Thomasina, now joined by Agnes, loudly bemoaned the dangers of having an Irish cut-throat sleeping in the house. Kathryn laughed softly at the thrill of excitement in Thomasina’s voice. She thought of Chaddedon but shook her head. She had other business to deal with. She looked where her father had kept his books and took down Gaddesden’s Rosa Anglica. Buckler’s wife would be returning soon and Kathryn wanted to know what the authority said about pregnancy, so she would be well prepared. She sat scanning the yellowing pages until she heard a knock on the door and Thomasina’s voice welcoming the visitor into the house. The woman edged her way into the kitchen, as if she was reluctant to be there. She was dressed as she had been earlier in the day, though Kathryn noticed she had drawn the veil more closely over her face. Kathryn sat the woman down and studied her, then stretched forward and carefully lifted the veil to reveal an angry bruise just under the woman’s right eye.
‘You did not have that this morning.’
Mathilda Buckler looked away.
‘I slipped and fell,’ she stuttered.
‘No, you didn’t,’ Kathryn replied. ‘Your husband struck you.’ She looked up at Thomasina, who was standing behind Mathilda. ‘A piece of raw meat, Thomasina, crushed and dried.’
> Thomasina hurried into the buttery and brought the meat back, a piece of steak cut off from a leg of venison, which had been hung to cure there.
‘Hold it against your eye,’ Kathryn ordered. ‘God knows why, but it will lessen the bruise. When you return home, wash it frequently in warm water mixed with rose-petals and a juice distilled from witch hazel. I will give you a small phial of it. Whatever you do, especially after applying the meat, keep the bruise clean. Do you understand?’
The woman nodded.
‘Your husband struck you, didn’t he?’
Again the woman nodded.
‘I feel ridiculous,’ Mathilda said. ‘This piece of meat.’
‘You’d look even worse with that bruise showing. Hold it there for a while. Now, why did your husband strike you?’
‘He says I am barren.’
‘And are you?’
‘I don’t know!’ Mathilda cried. ‘I have been his wife for a year, and Mistress, I have tried so hard!’
‘Do you have sisters?’
‘Yes, four.’
‘Are they married and do they have children?’
‘Yes, yes, they do, but my husband scorns me, and his kinsfolk look down on me.’ Mathilda took the meat away from her eye. ‘Mistress, what can I do? I am a good wife and in the bedchamber I try hard to please my husband.’
‘Does he love you?’
Mathilda looked away. ‘He wants an heir.’
‘And is your husband potent?’
Now Mathilda blushed. ‘It’s not his fault,’ she whispered. ‘He drinks too much and sometimes the . . .’
‘The coitus,’ Kathryn continued. ‘The union is not complete?’
Kathryn stared at the girl and tried to hide her pity. Such cases were common. A drunken husband, suffering from what her father had always called the ‘miller’s droop’, impotent himself but beating his wife like a thug. She knew no medical examination could tell for sure but noted the generous, swelling breasts of the girl, her slim waist and broad hips.
