Fallam's Secret

by Denise Giardina

  “She’s safe,” said the Crow. He waited a moment, then added impatiently, “So I was right. You wanted to seduce her.”

  The Raven answered with a sigh, “Yes. Though I have not yet. I cannot take this one lightly.”

  “It is not your way,” said the Crow, “to lightly seduce a woman. You will want to be certain of marrying her.”

  “Yes,” said the Raven. He lifted the saddle across a rail and let it drop. “But there is more to Lydde than meets the eye. In my head I know there are no such things as witches, yet I could think myself bewitched, for she has told me a tale so strange I cannot accept it. And yet something about her urges me to believe her.”

  “What sort of tale?”

  “Do not ask me that yet. I must investigate further. Then I shall tell you what I have learned.”

  “And if she is proven false?”

  The Raven shook his head. “I don’t know. I care about this woman very much and I cannot think ill of her, even if she is dissembling. She has courage, and a sorrow within her that calls me to protect her.” He put his hand on the Crow’s shoulder. “My friend, what have I done? To all of us? I have forced things into the open which might have been safest kept secret. I have put her in danger, and myself, and you, all for desire of her.”

  His voice cracked as he spoke, for he had never talked so much in his false voice and the strain of it had burned his throat.

  The Crow shook his head. “We could be in no more danger than before. It might even be a help, because I know you, my friend. You will hold on until the end and the noose is around your neck. Unless you have a reason to leave before it is too late. And now you do.”

  “Do I? Do I dare put a woman’s life in jeopardy for loving me?”

  “If she loves you, she will not want you to spare her.”

  “She doesn’t yet understand what a life with me would mean. Most women are not comfortable with a man who goes his own way as I do. They want a man who will sit by the hearth and talk with them and smoke his pipe in peace.”

  “She seems to know her own mind.”

  The Raven reached out and tousled his friend’s hair. “Do you play Cupid now?”

  “I do not understand this mystery you hint at, but I like her. I think she is just what you need.”

  “So. You would have me kill another woman with my love?”

  The Crow looked grave. “You should not say that. You could not help that your wife died in childbirth. Besides, the danger for a woman, any woman, is to love a man. For even the wife of the most cowardly man can die in that fashion, so what more danger to love a man who takes risks?”

  The Raven walked to the door of the stable and looked around to see if they were observed. “We are perilous to them in every way, you say?”

  “We are,” the Crow said with all the solemnity a very young man could muster. “It is their burden since the Fall.”

  The Raven said, “Do not tell that to Lydde. She will scratch your eyes out.”

  The Crow smiled at the note of pride in his friend’s voice.

  Chapter 12

  Mossup, Bounder, and Rose

  INSIDE SOANE’S CROFT a pandemonium broke out when Lydde appeared, Uncle John, Mother Bunch, and Mary all talking at once. Where had Lewis been? They had been beside themselves with worry, had thought again and again to call out the constables to search for him. Except that the good doctor continued to hold back, afraid this might do more harm than good. Whyever could it hurt? Mother Bunch had asked. Yet he waved her off with “Wait a bit longer, Mother Bunch.” And at last here came the wayward boy, looking unaccountably pleased with himself.

  Mary and Mother Bunch were determined to make a fuss over Lewis, but Uncle John took a firm grip on the boy’s shoulder and said, “Now to bed with you women. I shall deal with the boy myself.” He shook Lydde. “You shall come to my study and explain yourself,” he said sternly. And Lydde followed him into the study while Mother Bunch led a reluctant Mary upstairs.

  Uncle John had scarcely shut the door when Lydde began, “Oh, Uncle John you won’t believe! I am in love, I am madly in love…” and proceeded to pour out the story of her adventure, though omitting most details of the frequent kisses and horseback gropings.

  Uncle John sat wearily at his desk with his chin resting on his hand. It was hours past his bedtime and he had been truly worried, but had felt nothing like the alarm he felt at this new Lydde gushing on with no seeming sense of the danger of her situation. He thought that next time he was called out to assist the Raven’s gang he would find their leader and thrash him within an inch of his life. When at last Lydde fell silent he said mildly, “This is sudden, Lydde,” in hopes that a calm response might subdue her spirits.

  “Sudden!” She stared at him. “Uncle John, you forget how old I am. I look like a girl now, but I am fifty-five years old. I have fallen in love before, usually with idiots. I have been cheated on, I have been stood up. I have been used as a shield by gay men passing as straight. I have been told how marvelous I am by men who lied about being married. I have been with weak men who expected me to fight their battles for them.” She stopped, out of breath. Then she said, “I know I have only just met this man—”

  “And not even seen his face,” put in Uncle John.

  “And not even seen his face,” she agreed. “And yet I feel I have been waiting for him all my life. Tonight he came for me. And I went and I will go back if he will have me. I don’t care about consequences.”

  When he continued to shake his head, she said, “I’m disappointed in you. You’re the one who is always talking about connections. Why did I end up here, of all places, in Norchester, England, in the year 1657? If not for this, then what?”

  “Lydde.” Uncle John put his hand on hers. “I’m concerned about your safety, that’s all. Did he level with you about the danger?”

  “He did. He was everything he should be: honest, considerate, worried about me—” She stopped and smiled. “Well, he was a bit forward. But in a good way.”

  Uncle John groaned. “Here’s what I think. I think you’re in love with the idea of an outlaw. And I think you’re horny.”

  “Uncle John!”

  “Well, it’s natural. You’re in a twenty-year-old body now and you just got carried off by a masked highwayman. But Lydde, this isn’t a movie.”

  “You’re not being fair! I think he’s lonely, like I am, and he needs love as much as I do.”

  “Did he tell you what he’s facing?”

  She sobered up then. “Yes. He said he’d be caught and killed.”

  “More than killed,” Uncle John said. “Drawn and quartered. Do you know what that is?”

  She stared at him, not wanting to know.

  “This fellow has the district so stirred up he’ll get the worst sentence the seventeenth century can devise. Can you face up to that?”

  “If Noah Fallam hurts him, I’ll kill him myself.”

  “It isn’t just Noah Fallam. You don’t do what the Raven’s doing in seventeenth century England. Not without consequences.”

  “He’s going to escape to America.”

  “Lydde, Lydde.”

  She stood then, in tears. “What am I supposed to do? Turn my back on the most extraordinary man I’ve ever met? He said he loves me!”

  He doesn’t even know you well, Uncle John started to say. But the words died without being spoken. He wondered if that was true. He hadn’t known Lavinia at all when he walked into her classroom at West Virginia Tech. Then she read to them from Henry V, her voice an odd mix of patrician American and West Virginia twang, proclaiming He who sheds his blood with me this day shall be my brother, be he ne’er so vile, this day shall gentle his condition. John had been enthralled as the heroic words poured from the tiny young woman in a green sweater and gray skirt, nose in her book as she waved her arm before an audience of battle-toughened GIs just returned from Europe and the South Pacific. Hadn’t he known then?

  Lydde stood
before him, the niece he had raised as a daughter and worried over from afar. She’d often had her heart broken and called him from across the ocean to cry, and she had run from men who, to Uncle John, sounded perfectly suitable. I don’t know, she’d tried to explain. I don’t feel a thing for this one. She was shy, he’d reckoned. She was heartbreakingly independent. She was afraid of more loss.

  What he said now was, “You must be exhausted. Go to bed. We’ll talk more in the morning.”

  LYDDE stumbled wearily up the stairs to her room, where she began to undress. When she stood naked, she started to blow out her candle but hesitated. She looked down the length of her body, trying to imagine what he would think of her. Would he like the shape of her legs? Where might he touch her first? She placed her own hand on the breast he had fondled.

  Her reverie was broken by a sound behind her. She turned and there stood Mary, cradling her puppy in her arms, a look of astonishment on her face.

  LYDDE slept little that night. If she was not recalling the kisses and caresses of the Raven, then she was listening to the even breathing of Mary and the puppy, who had been named Bounder, beside her in the bed. Mary had been upset at Lydde’s deception, but Lydde had managed after a few incoherent attempts at explanation to assure her that Uncle John knew and approved.

  “But why are you doing it?” Mary had asked. “It is sinful, isn’t it, to pretend to be a boy?”

  “You must understand where I am from in Ireland,” Lydde pleaded. “It is a place where women do the things men do. That’s what I’m used to and I don’t think I could pretend otherwise. I would have to go back there instead of staying here.”

  “Oh,” Mary said. “Don’t do that. I’m too fond of you.”

  They had hugged then, sitting on the edge of Lydde’s bed. “And I’m very fond of you,” Lydde replied. “I love you like a sister.”

  They agreed that Uncle John would be told that Mary knew, but that Mother Bunch would continue to think that Lydde was Lewis.

  “But what is your real name?” Mary asked.

  “I don’t think I should tell you yet. Someday I will. But for now you must keep calling me Lewis. It’s for my safety, do you understand? If Jacob Woodcock or Noah Fallam knew I’m only pretending to be a boy, they might do something horrible to me.”

  “They would burn you at the stake,” Mary said solemnly.

  Lydde started to reassure her, then realized she was right. “Well,” she said, “I know I can trust you to keep my secret.”

  “I shall never tell.” But Mary could never stay solemn for long. She turned and threw herself full-length across the feather bed so that Bounder, true to her name, jumped up after her, thinking it time to play. “And now we can be like sisters. We can share a bed when it is cold. That shall be ever so nice as winter comes on. And we can talk about things.”

  Lydde smiled, for she recalled from her teenage years what those things would be. Boys. And sure enough, they had scarcely settled beneath the goose-down comforter, with Bounder curled up at their feet, when Mary said, “Don’t you think Simon Cleyes is the most handsome man in Norchester?”

  Lydde groaned to herself, then said, “I know nothing but good of Mr. Cleyes, but the man he works for is odious.”

  “Noah Fallam? Oh, he is strict, but Simon—I mean, Mr. Cleyes—says he owes everything to him. Simon was from a poor family and his father died. But Pastor Fallam sent Simon away to school, and gave money to his mother so she could feed her children. And Simon did so well that now he is Pastor Fallam’s secretary, and that is a very important position.” Mary edged closer to Lydde and then whispered, as though someone might overhear them, “Can I tell you something? Once I let him hold my hand. All the way from St. Pancras crossing to East Gate. It was lovely.”

  “Mary, you must be careful,” Lydde said sternly.

  “Oh, it was nothing more. Sim—Mr. Cleyes acts like a gentleman, even if he is from a poor family.”

  Lydde relented and gave the girl’s hand a squeeze. “And you might as well call him Simon when you speak about him to me. He has obviously invited you to call him that.”

  “He has,” Mary said, and Lydde thought she could feel the heat of her blush in the dark.

  And who am I to caution the girl? Lydde thought. I am far more rash than she. Then a thought struck her. Simon Cleyes was watching out for Mary and knew the workings of Noah Fallam’s government. He had also been a poor man and might have sympathy for others who were poor. Might he be the Raven? But she dismissed that at once. Cleyes was not so tall as the Raven, nor could she imagine the man who had kissed her being false enough to lead Mary on. (I am becoming more trusting of men, she noticed, and smiled in the dark.) But the Crow had been about the size of Cleyes. It was an intriguing thought—Simon Cleyes by day the loyal secretary to Noah Fallam and at night passing on what he knew to the Raven. She was still playing with this idea when she at last drifted off to sleep.

  DAYS passed with no word from the Raven. A restless Lydde helped Mary and Mother Bunch dig a straw-lined pit in the garden, where they would bury the cabbages and potatoes to last the winter. It was hard work even for Lydde’s young body, though she was glad for the distraction. She was grateful that Uncle John hired a pair of sisters, poor widows before he employed them, to come to Soane’s Croft to do the laundry, the heavy cleaning of pots and pans, the hauling of water from the pump in the street. Lydde guiltily doubted she could live a woman’s life in this place without such help, and that thought gave her uneasy moments that interrupted her daydreams about the Raven. She wondered if he was a man who could afford servants.

  After a meal of mincemeat pie (and fighting back a craving for a slice of pepperoni pizza), she took a nap. When she woke, Mother Bunch had a basket of herbal remedies ready for delivery. So Lydde walked along the Pye to the livery stable outside East Gate to see about a horse.

  She had visited the stable twice with Uncle John so she could have a horse to ride alongside Lady. Now she was ready to go out on her own. She found Mossup, the proprietor of the stable, mucking out the stalls. Mossup was a short, grizzled, greasy-headed old man of sixty-some years who looked as though he could fill a similar role on a television western.

  “Come for your mount?” he said amiably when he saw her.

  “Yes,” she said. “And this time Mr. Soane says I can go out on my own.”

  He nodded and walked her along the stalls to where a gentle gray mare waited. Rose, the horse was called, and she had never given Lydde a moment’s trouble.

  “Ye’ll be wanting Rose regular, then?” Mossup said.

  “Every day in the afternoons. The doctor says he’ll pay you by the week.”

  Mossup nodded. “That’ll do. But before you go out today, a word with ye, if ye will.”

  He had the look of a conspirator about him.

  “What do you mean?” Lydde asked cautiously.

  Mossup leaned closer so she could smell his stale breath. “I’ve been talking about ye, young lad. With a mutual friend of ours.”

  She waited. He obviously enjoyed keeping her in suspense. He looked around, then leaned closer still.

  “The Raven,” he said.

  An invisible finger ran down her spine.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

  “Sure ye do,” said Mossup with a grin. “Though you’re wise to take care how ye answer. Our friend tells me you’ve been an actor. He says you’ve done Shakespeare.”

  “Yes,” Lydde whispered, and knew Mossup could not be making this up. “I’ve done Shakespeare.”

  “A ganymede, are ye?”

  Ganymede was the pejorative term Jacob Woodcock had hurled at her upon her arrival in Norchester. It was, Lydde knew from her college days, the term for boys who played women’s roles on the seventeenth century stage.

  “Yes,” she said.

  Mossup nodded approvingly. “I too am an actor. Or was before the infernal Puritans closed the theaters and I fled London to fet
ch up here and live as I can. In Will Shakespeare’s troupe, I was, in my own ganymede days, and trod the boards at the Globe. When that good old stage burned, I went with the Red Bull Company. That was after my voice changed. I was never a leading man, you’ll understand. I’ve been Caliban and Pistol, Dromio and Dogberry and Sir Toby Belch and the Porter in Macbeth. You’re too young to have known the London days. But the Raven says you’ve been underground in Bristol, though I’m to mention it to no one here. I understand well enough the reason for that. Who have ye played?”

  Thank you, Raven, Lydde thought silently. She felt like crying with joy to be talking of theater again. “Violà,” she said. “Beatrice, Audrey, Lady Macbeth, Gonoril and Regan both.”

  Mossup nodded. “Would you like to act again, lad?”

  “Yes! But how?”

  “There are a pair of my fellow actors in the district. Guill and Sharpe, they are named, young fellows who fled London as I did. Now they keep a hostelry together at Little Gallops, which is but two miles from here. We meet on a regular basis to keep our hand in, just for the fun of it. Rehearsing, it would be like, with no audience in mind, since it is illegal and Noah Fallam keeps a close watch. But we all do miss it, and this suffices for the present. We need someone to play the female parts, for Guill does them badly. Will you agree?”

  “Gladly!”

  Mossup clapped his hands. “Good,” he said. “We gather here in the back room of the stable some days, and other days you and I shall ride to Little Gallops.”

  “But how do you know the Raven? Are you in his gang?”

  “Not properly speaking. No stomach for that sort of thing, don’t care for the idea of dangling from a gallows. But”—Mossup put a finger to his lips—“he does use my horses when he goes out at night. A different one each time so he won’t be recognized by his mount. And pays me well for the privilege.”