“Delicious, Frances,” said Gibb, saluting her with his glass of wine. “Delicious.”
“My thanks, brother. I only wish we had some pleasant diversion to look forward to after supper.”
“We could play at maw,” offered Mistress Pollington.
“You are too skilled with cards, Beatrix. You will beat us all as you did Father this afternoon,” said Frances. “Or perhaps we could have some music.” She looked over at Kit. “Would you play upon your gittern for us after supper, Christopher?”
“I have not ever heard you play, Constable,” said Bess Ellyott.
Mistress Pollington reacted to her comment by smiling all the more coyly at Kit. “Do you play, Constable Harwoode?”
Bloody … “Not well enough to give anyone here pleasure, Mistress Pollington.”
“He is being humble, Beatrix. My cousin is most talented,” said Frances. “Mayhap I should have hired the town waites to play for us tonight, though. They are quite competent.”
“We endured their squeaking enough the night of the Poynards’ entertainment, Frances,” said Kit.
“I did hear you have a troupe of traveling players in town,” said Mistress Pollington.
“Unhappily, Mistress Pollington, their play was rudely interrupted by a murder,” said Gibb, who’d drunk too freely of the spiced claret.
Beatrix Pollington, her mouth falling open to form an O, lifted a hand to her ashen face. Across the table from her, Mistress Ellyott’s knife paused midair, the morsel of sturgeon balanced on its blade readying to fall off.
“Master Harwoode, you distress your sister’s friend,” said Mistress Ellyott, carefully lowering her knife. “Do not fret, Mistress Pollington. You are safe here.”
“Forgive me if I have disquieted you, Mistress Pollington.” Gibb inclined his head, the feather tucked into the band of his velvet hat dipping dangerously close to the candle on the table. “We had succeeded in keeping the news from your delicate ears. But now I have been a fool and blurted it out.”
She blushed prettily. “I am made of sterner stuff than to faint away over such news, Master Harwoode.”
“Well done, Mistress,” he said, and Frances turned a speculative gaze upon her brother.
“I doubt the lack of a performance was a great miss, Gibb,” said Kit. “The players can’t have much talent, if they’re wandering through Wiltshire.”
“’Tis not so, Constable Harwoode. I am familiar with this troupe,” said Mistress Pollington. “They did stop in Gloucester last month. They are a most excellent group of players, truth be told. There is one among them who transforms into a most believable woman. I initially imagined they had hired a female as a member, which would be scandalous.”
Bess Ellyott abruptly set down the knife she’d once again lifted. It clinked against the edge of her pewter plate.
“What was it about the transformation that made it so believable, Mistress Pollington?” she asked.
“Why, his manner, Mistress Ellyott,” she replied. “He changed his voice until it was soft as a young girl’s, and the linen coif he wore cleverly concealed the line of his masculine jaw.”
“How would you describe this player?” asked Kit. For if the fellow could imitate a young girl, he could also imitate an aged crone.
Mistress Pollington paused longer than necessary to nibble a bite of trout. Pleased, perhaps, to have everyone’s eyes on her.
Finished, she daubed her mouth with her napkin. “He was just an ordinary fellow of ordinary size, Constable, from what I saw after he removed his disguise at the end of the play.”
“Christopher, what is your interest in this fellow?” asked Frances. “He is but a player who can dress and act as a woman does. ’Tis common enough. Every troupe requires such skills.”
Before he could respond, Mistress Pollington interrupted.
“That is indeed a requirement of every troupe, Frances,” she said. “However, I dare say no one is as convincing in such a role as Master David Merrick. He is fully astonishing!”
CHAPTER 23
Jesu.
Mistress Pollington blinked at them, unwitting of the effect her otherwise unremarkable observation would cause. If she had shot a cannonball through Kit Harwoode’s hall, Bess believed the impact would hardly have been greater.
“Why do you all stare at me in such a fashion?” She looked from one to the other. “Frances, what does this mean? What did I say?”
“I find myself as perplexed as you, Beatrix.” Mistress Westcote arranged her eating utensils upon her plate and calmly lowered her hands to her lap. “But I feel the stares have to do with the murder my brother mentioned.”
Mistress Pollington blanched, and she blinked faster.
“David Merrick then, Kit?” asked Master Harwoode.
“But how can that be, Constable?” asked Bess. “You just told me he was not wearing the robe that afternoon.”
The constable removed his napkin from where he’d hung it over his left shoulder and tossed it onto the table. “You know David Merrick well, Mistress Pollington?”
“You ask as though such familiarity is ill-advised,” she said. “Frances, prithee tell me, whatever is the matter?”
“You might wish to answer my cousin’s question, Beatrix. I assure you, all will be well.”
“If you are certain, Frances.” She composed herself. “Certes, I know David Merrick, Constable Harwoode. My family and I used to live in these parts, which is how I am also acquainted with Frances. Do you not recall us?”
“I’d not been living here long, Mistress, before you and your family removed to Gloucester,” he said. “I’d not had the privilege of being introduced to you as yet.”
“I am the one being forgetful, it seems,” she replied. “However, as I said, I am well familiar with the Merricks. My father sold them a portion of our property, land they now use to graze their cattle. But it has been at least seven or eight years since I have spoken with any of the Merrick family. I did not renew our acquaintance while I have been here. Our families no longer occupy the same circle, now that we make our home in Gloucester.”
And have undoubtedly become wealthier than dairy farmers, thought Bess.
“When did you observe David Merrick’s excellent ability to playact the part of a woman?” asked the constable.
Mistress Pollington looked around again, as though seeking an ally to whisk her away from his discomfiting queries. She found none.
“I observed his ability not long after my father made the sale of the land,” she said. “As a celebration of that event as well as our imminent departure, Master David and Mistress Ellyn did provide an entertainment. They often did act together. That even, they performed a short play he had written, during which he was attired as an old crone, wrapped in aprons and cloaks, and hunched like an aged creature might be. It was most amusing.”
“Did he include a clout over his face as part of his habit?” asked Bess.
By now, though, she perceived what the woman’s answer would be.
“Indeed so,” said Beatrix Pollington. “Like a countrywoman would do.”
Silence fell, its weight dragging more heavily on Bess than all of her skirts and petticoats. The constable rose slowly from his chair before turning to his cousin, who scrambled to his feet.
“We go to the Merricks’, Gibb,” he said with an icy voice. “David Merrick has questions to answer. From the inside of a jail.”
* * *
They found David Merrick in only a linen shirt, loose doublet, and hose, preparing to retire. Two of the men Kit had brought hauled Merrick from his house without giving him the chance to throw on a cloak to cover his undress.
Mistress Merrick, clutching her belly, watched from the doorway while younger Merricks huddled behind her skirts. “No, Constable! He has done nothing wrong!”
Dairy workers, including an ashen Thomasin, assembled to shake their heads and whisper among themselves.
“Constable!” cried Me
rrick. The torches the onlookers carried lit his face. It was dirty, and one eye was swelling shut. Someone had been free with their fist as they dragged him out into the yard. “Of what am I accused?”
“You killed that player fellow and yer dairymaid!” shouted the town baker from the safety of the horde that had trailed behind Kit and Gibb and their men. His breath misted in the damp air. “Merricks! They be not worthy of trust!”
“Not murder!” Merrick protested. “Not Anna. An accident! Not murder! None of them.”
The men holding his arms yanked him, and he stumbled.
Ellyn Merrick appeared at the doorstead. She shoved past her mother and grabbed one of the men who held Merrick. “What are you doing to him? Let him go!”
“He be a murderer,” called a townsman from the depths of the mob.
“No!” she shrieked, and began to strike the nearest fellow. “He did nothing! Let him go!”
Gibb ran forward, seizing her about the waist and pulling her backward. “Come now, Mistress Merrick.”
“Leave me be!” Ellyn Merrick slapped away Gibb’s hands. “He is innocent!”
“Ellyn, stop,” said her brother.
“You despised Bartholomew Reade,” continued Kit. “Resented his success. An actor tripping upon the stage. A life you’ll not ever enjoy, trapped here at your family’s farm.”
“No,” he whimpered.
“And then there is the marriage between your sister and Master Poynard,” said Kit. “Bartholomew Reade’s return cast that event in doubt, didn’t it?”
“He would not,” cried Ellyn Merrick.
A fellow bolted from the house, knocking aside the youngest Merrick girl, who’d been standing in his path. “I found ’em, Constable!” He held aloft a crumpled gown and kerchief. “At the bottom of a trunk in his chamber.”
The outfit of a crone.
The gathered crowd murmured.
Kit, his hand gripping the pommel of his dagger, turned to Merrick. “A clever disguise, sir, to conceal yourself as you crept about. The poppets were also clever. To throw suspicion upon a witch.”
“What?” he sputtered. “What?”
“David would never …” Ellyn Merrick tried to break free of Gibb’s grasp, but he held her fast.
“And to frighten Old Jellis to death.” Kit shook his head. “He would have swung in your place, Master Merrick.”
“I did visit Old Jellis in that garb, not wanting to be recognized,” he admitted. “But only to ask what he might have seen. I … I suspected Poynard. I did! But Old Jellis took one look of me dressed so, gasped and clutched his chest, then fell straight dead. I vow it! I did not intend to harm him!”
“No!” cried his sister. “Say nothing more, David!”
“Then Anna,” continued Kit. “She saw you coming back from having killed Reade. She had to be silenced.”
“No,” he wailed. “’Twas not like that. No.”
“Then what was it like, Master Merrick?” asked Kit.
He didn’t answer. Ellyn Merrick sobbed but ceased struggling.
Kit frowned, his stomach twisted and taut. “Take him away, gentlemen.”
* * *
“Your good sister did weary of awaiting your return, Mistress, and had Humphrey see her home. She vowed to return on the morrow, though, at first light,” said Joan, taking Bess’s cloak from her. “How was the constable? How was the meal?”
“Well enough and well enough.” Bess worked her feet free of her tight leather shoes and stepped into her soft slippers. “But I am overwearied from the night’s events.”
“Should I help you out of your gown, Mistress?”
“In a moment, Joan.” Bess looked over at her. “The constable means to charge David Merrick with the murders.”
“Mistress Ellyn’s brother?”
Bess padded through the entry passage and into the hall, relaying what she’d learned. Quail tapped after her as she crossed to the fire burning upon the hearth.
“He was the clout-covered woman!” exclaimed Joan. “He scared Old Jellis and left poppets for Anna and for you!”
“Marcye Johnes was correct about him, it seems.” Quail dropped to his haunches by the hearth, and Bess reached her hands toward the flames. Why did the fire not warm her, though?
“But to have harmed Anna, one of his servants …” said Joan. “He is evil, Mistress. Poor girl.”
Bess stepped nearer to the hearth and rubbed her hands together. “The constable concludes that David Merrick took advantage of Anna’s sickness to meet with Master Reade. Master Merrick was envious of Master Reade and sought to keep him away from Ellyn. He may have wished as greatly as his mother did to see her wed to Jeffrey Poynard, a most beneficial union.”
“Such a wish required Master Reade’s death?” asked Joan.
“Perhaps David Merrick did not mean to kill him,” said Bess. “Perhaps he only sought to warn him again—recall Simon telling you he’d seen a man shouting at Master Reade to ‘stay away from her’—but Master Merrick’s passions overwhelmed his self-command.”
Quail jumped to his feet and barked at the street-side hall window. A flare of orange lit the diamond panes of glass. Joan hurried over to look out onto the road.
“Men with torches come down the lane, Mistress. And they drag David Merrick behind them.”
Bess joined her at the window. Rain had begun to fall, and the torches spat and smoked in the dampness.
“How much sorrow could have been avoided if only Bartholomew Reade had not returned to the village,” said Bess. The men’s angry voices caused candles to be lit in windows and noses to press to glass so their owners might gawp. “Poor Anna. An innocent victim caught in a tangle of jealousies. I wonder if Master Reade truly meant to take her to London, or if his gifts and promises were but sport to him.”
Of a sudden, she recollected a snippet of a conversation that seemed from a distant time instead of a mere few days ago.
He even gave me a gift that proved his regard, though it was taken from me.
Bess’s thoughts tumbled, like checkstones tossed about in a child’s game. She had never been as nimble as Robert at catching the pebbles. She still felt slow.
“Think you not, Mistress?” asked Joan.
“What is that?” asked Bess, her attention fixed upon a notion that pained her.
“I was saying, Mistress, that Master Merrick’s guilt means I need not fret over that missing scrap of cut material.”
Bess looked over at her servant. “What cut material?”
“While you were at the constable’s, I set myself to mending your madder-dyed gown. The hem is raveled at the back,” she said. “We store the ells of spare material in the trunk in Mistress Margery’s chamber, the room she uses when she is here.”
The chamber Ellyn had also made use of. “And?”
“The length of madder linen has been cut. A small piece hastily trimmed from one edge.”
The tremor that sped across Bess’s skin had naught to do with the night’s chill. No. Not her. “Did Margery make use of any of that material when last she was here, Joan?”
“No, Mistress. I am certain she did not.”
“Which means …”
“Which means that Mistress Ellyn cut it,” said Joan.
“To make a poppet for me.”
“Aye, Mistress.”
I have been blind. Caught up in sympathy for a woman who’d seemed pitiable, but may have deserved no mercy, no compassion at all. The realization made her heartsore.
She lied to me. And I was so easily gulled.
“Joan, I need my cloak again,” said Bess, stepping back from the window. “For I go to the constable’s.”
* * *
“What do I with the food, sir?” Alice gave the hall table, only partly cleared of platters and glasses, a forlorn look. “Your good cousin, Mistress Westcote, had no thought but for her unhappy friend and did not take what remnants she ought to give to her servants.”
“You are welcome to it,” said Kit, dropping onto the chair he’d drawn over to the fireplace.
“But there is so much!”
“I care not, Alice.” Shouts echoed outside, men heckling David Merrick. Kit should have demanded the watchmen enforce the curfew and clear the square. The watchmen were probably among the hecklers. “Take what you want and give the rest away. Whatever you see fit.”
A knock sounded on the house door, and Alice hastened off to answer it. A female voice echoed up the staircase, and the woman soon crossed the threshold of the hall.
“If you still have an appetite, Mistress Ellyott, plenty of food remains,” he said, standing.
She lowered the hood of her cloak, scattering raindrops that had collected on it. “I have no appetite, Constable, for I have an admission to make,” she said. “One that gives me no pleasure.”
* * *
“You think Ellyn Merrick made the poppets, Mistress Ellyott?” asked Kit.
She hurried through the rain at his side. He’d sent a message with the watchman to have Gibb meet them at the Merricks’ farm. If Bess Ellyott was correct about her suspicions, they might need his cousin’s help.
“The one found in my garden for certain, though likely both. Made with fabric she’d found in the chamber she borrowed, stuffed with straw and feathers easily collected from our outbuildings,” she replied, the hood of her cloak drawn low over her face. She’d not listened to his arguments for why she should stay at her house. She never did listen to his arguments. “How it will gall me to admit to Humphrey he was right.”
“How could she have left the one at the dairy barn?” he asked, his grip firm on the pommel of his dagger to keep the weapon from slapping against his hip. “She was at your house, recovering.”
“Ellyn, not so weak as I had thought her, may have slipped out,” she said. “My brother’s manservant thinks she did.”
“Ah.”
“’Tis my fault she left that poppet for Anna.” She peered at him around the edge of her hood. “I told Ellyn I thought the girl had witnessed something important, something that had frightened her. Not many hours later, a witch’s effigy was tossed into the farmyard.”
A Fall of Shadows Page 25
