A Fall of Shadows

by Nancy Herriman

  “I’m not Pitts,” said Kit. “I would like to talk to Simon. Where can I find him?”

  The fellow lifted his head. He jerked back when he realized it was the constable who stood in his kitchen. “What has the boy done?”

  “Nothing criminal,” he said as Simon walked through the door that led out onto the courtyard.

  “Well, there he be.” The man nodded toward the lad.

  Kit strode across the kitchen. “Come outside, Simon,” he said to the boy, taking his elbow and pulling him out of the kitchen.

  “What is it now, Constable?” Simon asked once Kit had shut the back door behind them.

  “I want to ask you about the master of the players,” said Kit. “I thought you might know the answer to my question, as you’re so very watchful.”

  The lad grinned at the compliment, revealing his chipped front teeth. “They are all in the stocks for brawling. Even Master Howlett! Out in the rain!”

  “Aye, just so.”

  Kit scanned their surroundings to see who might be listening. A torch, tucked into a holder next to one of the outbuilding’s doors, sputtered in the drizzle. A man who’d been cleaning a bucket beneath its light ducked back into the stable and out of the rain. Leaving them alone.

  “Yesterday afternoon, did you notice Master Howlett anywhere that might not be usual for a visiting player like him to be wandering?” asked Kit.

  “I saw him near the river,” he answered. “Me and the boy who works in the stable went to fish. We be allowed, Constable!” Simon hastily added.

  “I am not here to arrest you for fishing on Poynard land, Simon. Continue.”

  “I saw the fellow, walking along the path that goes near by the river,” said the lad. “An hour or so before the sun began to set.”

  “Did he look anxious or in a hurry?”

  “Not much,” he said. “He just kept on his way.” He pointed away from the grounds surrounding the house. Away from town.

  “Howlett was headed that direction?” asked Kit. “Are you sure?”

  “Certes, I am.”

  Kit gazed into the dark, the rain as it fell winking like jewels in the torchlight. That direction would have led Howlett toward the eastern road that passed the old fort hill. And the Merricks’ farm.

  A simple walk along the river, Howlett? I think not.

  And the noose is closing about your neck.

  CHAPTER 19

  “The bruise on your face looks worse this morning, Gibb,” said Kit.

  “My thanks for the compliment, coz.” Gibb touched fingertips to his cheekbone. “It feels worse as well.”

  They strode across the market square, splashing through puddles. The sun had risen barely a half an hour earlier, but already a gaggle of onlookers had collected where the traveling players, including Howlett, remained locked in the stocks, their hands and feet protruding through the holes. Out of curiosity, Kit had once asked to be locked there. The jailer had humored him, and then, chuckling, had fastened the lock and walked off. Not long after, Kit’s legs had begun to tingle, then lose all feeling. Shouts and threats of seeing the jailer placed in the stocks himself had brought the fellow running back to free him.

  “Why think you Master Howlett would need to kill Master Reade?” asked his cousin, his attention on the crowd. Even the priest from All Saints, in his long dark gown and severe black cap and coif, had joined them. The wife of the tailor, whose shop was located hard by the stocks and pillory, stood with her arms folded in the entrance to the business. The rabble blocked any customers from reaching her door. “Why not simply steal the manuscript from Master Reade and refuse to return it, if that play was what he most desired?”

  A roar arose from the crowd. The more boisterous among them shouted obscenities at the players, making the rest laugh over their increasingly creative insults. Dunning flushed with anger. Howlett hung his head.

  “Because Howlett failed to locate it,” said Kit, stopping to watch the crowd in case matters spun out of control. “Otherwise, he might have done just that.”

  “He would have been most angry to not find the manuscript upon Master Reade’s body,” said Gibb. “But why harm Anna?”

  “He must have concluded that Reade had managed to give the manuscript to her just before Howlett arrived at the hill,” said Kit. “He did not know that she hadn’t met Reade because of her illness, though.”

  “But the witch’s effigy?”

  “A warning. Mayhap he pinned a note to the poppet, threatening her if she did not return the manuscript.”

  “Ah.” Gibb’s brows tucked together. “But I still do not understand why he sought to kill Anna, if he did.”

  “She did not respond to his threat, and he panicked,” said Kit. “Intent upon departing the village as quickly as possible, he went to the Merricks’ farm. One of the Poynards’ servants spotted him walking that direction the day Anna died. Once there, he confronted the girl, attempting to get her to hand over the manuscript. The cow became agitated—”

  “And trampled her!”

  “Before she died, she must have protested that Reade hadn’t given her the manuscript, for Howlett continued to search for it yesterday morning,” said Kit. “Unsuccessfully.”

  The crowd looked uninterested in doing more than taunting the players, so Kit continued on. He turned his steps toward the lane that would head away from town and toward the Merricks’ farm. He had one final broken thread to tie in his investigation. He needed a witness to confirm that Howlett had been near the barn when Anna died. Then all would be concluded and the man could be charged with the crime.

  “I must say that Frances will be happy we near a resolution. You shall have no more excuses to delay her supper,” said Gibb, a grin lifting the corner of his mouth. “Tonight, then. And I vow you will find Beatrix pretty.”

  “That is the name of Frances’s friend? Beatrix?”

  “Aye,” said Gibb. “She will be happy, too. She tires of idling in wait for you, the handsome and most agreeable Constable Christopher Harwoode. Or so Frances would have her believe.” He dodged Kit’s fist with a laugh, then sobered. “’Tis time you put the memories of Luce to rest, Kit. She would not wish you to mourn her forever. It has been five years now. There are other women. Worthy women.”

  Kit pulled up short, his spine, every muscle, stiffening. Gibb’s intentions were good. But his freehearted cousin could not comprehend the pain he felt, which burned and itched like a scar.

  “You needn’t accompany me to the Merricks’, Gibb.”

  “I meant no harm, Kit.”

  “Nonetheless,” he said. “Keep a watch on those people. I’ll return soon.”

  He strode off, his cousin staring after him.

  * * *

  “All is concluded, Constable?” asked David Merrick, stretching his neck above his ruff. “I am most pleased.”

  They stood together in the farmyard, where Merrick had been watching one of his family’s cowherds move cattle from their barn out toward the fields.

  “Not quite yet, Master Merrick.” Kit’s gaze tracked the herder in his dun-colored tunic and sagging wool hose as he poked and prodded the animals toward an opening in the woven fence that separated the farm buildings from the meadows beyond. “We have found the black robe the killer wore while stabbing Master Reade, though.”

  Merrick recoiled at Kit’s bluntness. “Then what remains unfinished, Constable?”

  “The matter of how Anna Webb died.”

  “We have paid the fine for the red cow causing her death. And sold the animal, to be rid of it. None of the dairymaids would work with the beast,” he said. “My father will be angry. Though old, the cow gave good milk. It could not be helped, though. He will understand.”

  Merrick did not sound certain about his father’s understanding.

  “The master of the troupe of players was observed walking this direction, not so long before Anna died,” said Kit. “Did he come here, Master Merrick?”

&nb
sp; David Merrick blinked. “John Howlett? I think not. I have been occupied with dairy accounts, though. They keep me in my office most hours of the day.”

  “I would like to speak with Thomasin, then,” said Kit, as the woman herself appeared at the entrance of the barn, a pail of milk in each hand. Sparrows that had settled nearby flew off as Thomasin closed the barn door. She carried herself with a straighter back than provided by a tightly laced kirtle. A confident stance that Kit associated with fearlessness. “If you do not mind.”

  Merrick squared his shoulders and jutted his chin. His stance was never confident, Kit realized.

  “Thomasin, come here,” Merrick called to her.

  Her brow furrowing, she set down the pails and walked to where they waited.

  Thomasin dipped a brief curtsy. “Master David?”

  “The constable would talk to you.”

  Her pale-eyed gaze skipped from Merrick’s face to Kit’s. “Aye?”

  “Thomasin, you are an observant woman,” said Kit. “Jennet has told me she noticed no strangers near the farm when Anna died. Can you say the same?”

  She shot Merrick a glance before answering. “I may have noticed a stranger, Constable. I should have mentioned this to Mistress Ellyott when she was here yesterday, nosing about. But she did not ask what I might have seen, and I did not say.”

  “What saw you?” asked Merrick.

  “I am certain ’twas just a shadow,” she said. “A trick of the fading light, but I imagined I saw a person. In the trees, there.”

  She pointed at a copse at the base of the hill upon which the Merricks’ house and barns had been built. If Kit could see through the trees, he’d spy a grassy vale, a lane where the remains of Mother Fletcher’s cottage smoldered, and another stand of trees, beyond which rose the mound where Reade had died.

  Merrick stepped nearer to her. “Was it the master of the troupe?”

  “Master Merrick, I shall question her. If you will,” said Kit. “Could you tell if this person was a man or a woman?”

  “I did go over to look,” she explained. “But when I reached the woods, no one was hiding there. I did not hear the sound of running. I did not see fresh-trampled footprints in the mud. I returned to the house and put the event out of my mind. ’Twas just a shadow.”

  “What think you, Constable?” asked Merrick.

  That I wish I had proof this specter in the woods was John Howlett.

  “Thomasin, did Anna ever mention the master of the troupe to you?” asked Kit.

  “She talked at supper about Bartholomew’s return,” said Thomasin. “On and on she spoke about him, ’til we tired of her chattering. She said nothing about the others, though. I cannot say if she knew this fellow.”

  “One of the players,” said Merrick. “Of course ’twould be one of them! Any one of them would hurt a pretty young woman like Anna! He hid in the trees. Seeking the right time to attack—”

  “David!” shouted Mistress Merrick, stepping into the yard. “David, there you are. Come now. Your brother is most violently ill.”

  Merrick headed for the house, and his mother moved aside as he passed by her.

  “This house is accursed, Constable,” she cried out to Kit. “We have a curse upon us!”

  * * *

  “Mistress Ellyn will hopefully be staying with us for some time, Humphrey,” said Bess. She knelt in the kitchen garden, a cloth beneath her shins to protect her skirt against the wet ground. She dug up leeks and parsnips for the evening meal, enjoying the aroma of the soil, the sight of worms wiggling away from her spade. She usually left the task to Joan, but today it was one that felt needful. A task that might soothe her unquiet mind. “I intend to train her as an herbalist, so you must accept her presence in the house.”

  Robert’s manservant, his head and face sheathed in gauze, worked at the great woven-straw beehives occupying the corner of the garden. He prepared the bees for their winter rest and would take the weakest hive to be gradually merged with the stronger so that all would survive the coming weather.

  She sat back upon her heels and looked over at him. “Did you hear me, Humphrey?”

  He made a grunting noise that might signal he had heard but continued peeping through the opening of the nearest hive. A handful of bees buzzed around him. “I did.”

  Bess shook dirt off the parsnip bunch she’d pulled from the ground. “We must not continue to suspect Mistress Ellyn of any part in the crimes that have occurred,” she said, laying the parsnips alongside the leeks in her basket.

  He did not reply; ’twas certain Humphrey would continue to suspect her all he wished.

  “She also did not leave that poppet for us to find,” said Bess. “A band of mischievous boys tossed the thing over the wall. The servant girl next door heard them.”

  “Town lads may have done.” Humphrey straightened and carefully swept a bee off his sleeve. “The village folk mistrust you.”

  A statement he delivered with untroubled ease, as though the townspeople’s opinion was only to be expected.

  Oh, Robin, what am I to do with your manservant?

  “Then I must win back their trust,” she said, standing up.

  The gauze netting concealed the look on his face. “Aye, Mistress.”

  Must he sound so doubtful of the success of such an endeavor?

  Bess collected her basket and returned to the house. Joan met her at the back door.

  “Mistress. The Merricks have sent a servant to bring you to their house again,” she said. “’Tis their youngest son this time. He has been struck strangely ill. Like Anna.”

  * * *

  Mistress Merrick, her hand upon her protruding belly, met Bess at the door. The gaunt house-servant—Jennet—who’d brought her to the Merricks’ darted off. A rush of anxious voices greeted the girl as she disappeared into the house’s service rooms.

  Lips pinched tight, Mistress Merrick glanced toward the noise. Unwelcome gossip to be punished later.

  “I regret that I have had need to call you here again, Widow Ellyott. This time, my youngest is ill,” she said. “He purges like Anna did. Come this way.”

  Bess, gripping the strap of the satchel that held her physic, followed the woman. They passed through the ground-floor rooms and up the stairs to the chambers above. In the upper parlor, the other Merrick children huddled together like a cluster of unhappy and frightened puppies. They had defensively set their backs to the wall of the room, through which Bess had walked that first day when she’d been called to tend an ailing dairymaid. The children silently watched her and their mother, their quietness a measure of their unease.

  Bess entered a chamber set off the parlor, the woman with her pausing halfway across the room.

  “He is in there,” she said, pointing to a smaller chamber to her right. “I dare not enter, to protect the babe in my womb.”

  “I understand, Mistress Merrick,” said Bess.

  She went ahead without the woman and entered a cramped room set all around with low bedsteads. This must be where the youngest children slept with the servant tasked to watch them. Someone had opened the sole narrow casement window to freshen the stinking air within the space. The ill Merrick boy, green faced and moaning, lay atop a bed in the corner. At his side stood Constable Harwoode, his arms crossed.

  He inclined his head. “Mistress Ellyott.”

  “Is a sick child a concern for the law these days, Constable?” she asked, setting her satchel alongside the boy’s bed. Furnishings were sparse—a handful of trunks, the bedsteads, a woven rush mat frayed about the edges that had likely been used elsewhere at one time—the whitewashed plaster walls empty of all decoration. Somber but adequate for children.

  “It is if the cause of his illness is the same as what sickened Anna Webb,” he said.

  “She had a stomach sickness.” Bess drew over the only stool she noticed in the room. “An illness that occurs with sad regularity, Constable. Without question you have suffered from it yo
urself, as have I.”

  “Any sickness of mine, however, has never kept me from a planned meeting with a man soon to be murdered, Mistress Ellyott,” he said.

  Indeed.

  She smiled down at the lad, whose eyes were the same shade of cinnamon brown as his sister Ellyn’s. He was a handsome little boy, far more so than his brother David. “How do you feel, young sir? Are any of your siblings sickly, also? Or any of the household servants?”

  She’d asked Anna a similar question, and she received a similar response from the boy. Afraid to open his mouth for fear the nausea would return, he shook his head.

  “Then mayhap you alone have eaten something foul, which has tortured your stomach,” she said, resting the back of her hand against his forehead. No fever to speak of, same as with Anna. Bess reached for her satchel and untied the strings binding it closed. “Is that what has happened? Bad food?”

  Strangely, his eyes began to water. “I did not mean to.”

  “What did you not mean to eat, hmm?” she asked.

  Bess retrieved the jar of boiled organy and mint leaves that had been diluted into wine. The same physic she’d used to treat Anna and Ellyn. Disquiet shivered across her skin as she poured out a quantity into the pottery cup she had brought.

  “I drank it. I shouldn’t have done,” he said, crying openly now.

  The shiver became a prickle of gooseflesh. “Drank what?” she asked. “What did you drink?”

  “From that bottle,” he said, swallowing hard. Bess wiped the tears off his cheeks. “Out by the rubbish pit. Where I saw Jennet with that cloth poppet.”

  Bess shot a look at Kit Harwoode. “Where is this pit, lad?” he asked.

  “Behind the front barn.”

  Not far from the fence where Bess had retrieved a witch’s effigy from a patch of thistle.

  “I will go look, Mistress,” said the constable. He ran from the room, calling for Mistress Merrick.

  “Boys like you can be most curious, I know. ’Tis understandable.” Bess smiled again at the lad, wishing to calm him. “Tell me about Jennet and the poppet.”