Coda: The Third Albert Mystery (The Albert Mysteries Book 3)

by David Crossman

  He knocked gently.

  “Who is it?”

  “Brother Richard, your worship.”

  “Come in.”

  If the Bishop was surprised when Foss followed the friar into the room, it didn’t show. When Mirth emerged from the shadows, however, he sat bolt upright, pulling the blankets up about his neck.

  “A woman!” his breath ensteamed by the frigid air.

  Friar Richard, not accustomed to having his commands ignored by anyone, much less a slip of a girl, was flustered. “Pardon, your worship. I told her to stay outside.” He raised an arm and pointed at the door. “I told you to stay outside.” He cast a backward glance down the hall to reassure himself that the donkey and the raven had remained in the courtyard. “I told her to stay outside.”

  “Best do,” said Foss.

  Mirth turned toward the door and, with a swish of her skirt, said “may as well. Nothin’ to see in ‘ere.”

  Bishop Sutton leveled an inquiring appeal at Foss.

  “My wife,” said the dwarf.

  The Bishop nearly choked. “Wife!”

  “That’s whatI said,” said Friar Richard.

  Foss spun on his heel. “Why don’t you number yourself among the dearly departed,” he said, jerking a thumb toward the hall.

  The Friar looked at the Bishop who nodded.

  “Very well.” He bent down, holding his cowl together with one hand and, as he passed, whispered at Foss. “Perhaps I can find a doll for your wife to play with.”

  Foss didn’t rise to the bait. “Don’t let the door spank your backside on the way out.”

  “So,” said the Bishop, swinging his feet to the floor.

  Foss couldn’t help but draw a hasty mental comparison between the Bishop in bed and King John in bed. John hadn’t been nearly as royal.

  The Bishop decanted some wine into two goblets and handed one to Foss. “I am so sorry to hear of the King’s death. A great tragedy.”

  Foss sipped his wine. “Aye,” he said into the cup. “More for some than others.”

  “You were with him?”

  “Aye.”

  “Did he . . . was his passing, gentle?”

  “Died with a smile on,” said Foss truthfully.

  “I’m glad to hear it. We shall pray for his soul.”

  “Put a lot of wind behind them prayers if you hope to blow open the Pearly Gates on his behalf. I expect he’s feelin’ mighty warm at present.”

  “Then we shall pray the Lord’s mercy will suffice to cover his sins.”

  “Amen.”

  Bishop Sutton regarded Foss closely for a moment. “Am I to send the message now?”

  “You still have it, then?”

  The Bishop hesitated only slightly. “Yes.”

  “But you were instructed to send it as soon as you heard the King was dead.”

  The Bishop diverted his eyes from Foss’s knowing gaze. “Be wise as serpents, and gentle as doves,” he said in the direction of the fireplace, where a log glowed on the grate. “A dove who takes political realities into consideration, Foss.”

  Which is what Foss thought would be the case, and the reason he had chosen, without hesitation, to come to Lincoln to retrieve the note rather than attempt to intercept it on the way to Castle Combe.

  “No one else knows about it?”

  “Of course not, I gave my word.”

  “Meaning no offense, your Eminence, but words are equal parts air and vibration; neither of much effect when deeds are wanting. And your promise to send that message immediately upon hearing of his majesty’s demise was crafted from just such raw materials.”

  The Bishop smiled at Foss’s sermonette. “I’m half expecting you announce the offertory.” He reached for the handle of the drawer in his bedside table, drew it out, and removed an envelope. He handed it to Foss, who immediately verified that the seal hadn’t been broken.

  “It saddens me,” said the Bishop, “to find you suspicious of me despite our long association.”

  It was Foss’s turn to smile. “You are mistaken, worship. It isbecause of our long association those suspicions arise.”

  The Bishop winced. “Before God! Is that the envelope the King entrusted to me?”

  Foss turned it over in his hand. “It would seem to be.”

  “And is it or has it ever been open?”

  “It seems not, to the naked eye.”

  The Bishop lay back against his pillow. “I rest my case. Now, speaking of naked eyes, mine tire of trying to bring you into focus from so near the floor. You may deprive me of your presence as soon as you might.”

  Foss bowed as deeply as his sore back would allow. “Appearances deceive, do they not, your Reverence?”

  “Had I any hope of hitting such a tiny target,” said Bishop Sutton, “I would throw something at you.”

  Foss left the room.

  “What does it say?” asked Mirth as Friar Richard escorted them across the courtyard.

  Foss sniffed at the air. “Is that bread I smell, Dick?”

  The Friar tilted his head toward the bakery. “The Bishop is expecting guests, so brother Alsop will have the novices at it all night.”

  “You know what I hear about the heathen Mohammetans, good Friar?” said Foss in an apparent change of subject.

  “Any number of things, I should image,” the friar replied. “I’ve heard they fly on carpets!”

  “Indeed? One way to get the dust out’ve ‘em, I suppose,” said Foss. “But no, that’s not what the smell of that bread a-bakin’ reminded me of about the Mohammetans.”

  “What then?”

  “It reminded me that they put a great deal of store in hospitality. Enter their tent out in the middle of the desert, I hear, and they’ll lay it on thick. Food and drink, I mean.”

  “You are subtle, Foss. Never let anyone tell you different.”

  “No! But it’s true. For all they may relieve you of your head for lookin’ cross-eyed at their camel, you’ll depart this life with a belly full of their hospitality.”

  Friar Richard laughed. “You know, Foss, I quite agree. I hope I’m not too Christian to learn, even from a Mohammetan. Besides which, I think it my duty to test the bread on you, if you’d be so kind, to see that it’s fit for the Bishop’s guest, don’t you?”

  A few minutes later, seated at the long oaken bench that lined the wall at the far end of the bakery, just beyond the ovens, Foss and Mirth wrapped themselves around thick slices of warm buttered bread and frothy beer. Foss mentioned casually; “This company the Bishop’s got comin’. Important, you say?”

  “Importanthe says,” said Richard, who had declined to excuse himself from his evening fast, but was, in deep draughts, filling his sinuses if not his belly with bread. “But before you ask, no, I don’t know who it is.”

  Foss knew. With John dead, there were only two people who could elicit this kind of nocturnal activity, and one of them, the mother of John’s eldest son Henry was, if things were going according to plan, in the west country. That left one possibility: Alexander of Scotland.

  “No, no. And you wouldn’t tell if you knew, and I shouldn’t ask if you did,” said Foss. “But, as Oliver’s steward. . .”

  “Bishop Sutton,” said the Friar who, willing to overlook the dwarf’s liberties regarding his own name, could not brook abuse of the Bishop’s.

  “To be sure, to be sure.” Foss inclined his head slightly in apology. “As I was saying, as steward of this holy establishment, he—the aforementioned Bishop—will have told you when the guest might be expected, and how many will be in his party. . .”

  “Tomorrow between terce and noon, I understand,” said Friar Richard, watching with especial interest as one of the novices removed another pallet of bread from the nearest oven. “With ten or twelve in the immediate party.”

  ‘And another fifteen hundred slavering, sodden Scotsmen haunting the forests nearby, blue in the face, armed to the teeth, and thirsty for English blood,’ th
ought Foss. ‘Sutton’s eager to buy his own safety with bread, but what if food isn’t enough?’

  Suddenly he wondered at how easily the Bishop had parted with the letter John had entrusted to his safe-keeping. True, he had done what was right; what was expected of him and what he had sworn to do upon all he held holy; but holiness, though sometimes thick enough to knock down a wall—could, by circumstances, be stretched thin enough to see through.

  “Bring that with you,” he said to Mirth, who had just buttered another piece of bread.

  “Why? Where are we going?” she asked with her mouth full, complying nevertheless, after a hearty pull at the tankard.

  “Have you ever seen a ferret flushed from a hedge?”

  “Aye. Of course.”

  “Not pleasant for the ferret.”

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Agnes Porthwright’s breath, thought Albert—studying her through the wreath of steam rising from his teacup into the cold, early morning air of her kitchen garden—must smell like yesterday. It was the air she breathed; the atmosphere she inhabited. He imagined her amid sheet-draped furniture, bodies in winding clothes, mothballs in bureau drawers, inhaling air from a younger world. He could almost see motes of history rising from her lips as she spoke.

  “The earliest mention of the Foss stone in its present location is this.” Agnes adjusted her pince nez, then looked over them at the brittle page of the book she had opened on the table. She tapped a carefully written entry that had become faded with time. “Year 1375. Description of chapel renovations carried out by the Tiptofts.”

  Albert smiled as another piece fell into place. Now he knew how Robert Tiptoft had come into sudden wealth. Somehow, after becoming the owner of Langar Manor, he had discovered King John’s treasure behind the Foss wall; then, perhaps to preserve the secret? had moved the FOSS stone to its present location.

  On the wall behind the man in the blue pajamas.

  But why move the FOSS stone rather than just destroy it or throw it away?

  And if Tiptoft had found the treasure, wouldn’t he have removed it from its hiding place behind the stairs?

  But he must not have, else why would Annabella Scrope/Howe have gone to all that trouble with the painting hundreds of years later? Surely not simply to direct the curious viewer to the empty space below the stairs.

  That was a thought, though. Even if Tiptoft had removed the treasure, the hiding place wouldn’t be empty, would it? Welf was there. Larky was there. Who knew how many others.

  A grave.

  Could that be what Annabella wanted him to know?

  Albert was startled. It was the first time he had the feeling that she was reaching out across the centuries to speak directly to him, to tell him her secret.

  Perhaps she, too, would find her way to his bed one night.

  The thought made him very uneasy.

  Why would she care about Welf and Larky, two otherwise unknowns who had died hundreds of years before her time? Dead people practically formed the mortar that held the church together. They were everywhere, walls, floors; inside and out. What’s another grave?

  Could it have something to do with Larky’s crime—murdering Welf?

  He could feel his head swelling with questions. He needed an answer to relieve the pressure. Any answer. “Have you ever heard of someone named Mirth?”

  “How very odd you should ask.”

  Agnes expected him to say ‘why odd?’, so she continued as if he had. “Not a year ago I was compiling a list of everyone known to have attended St. Aubry’s.” She looked at him with eyes enlarged by her glasses. “It wasn’t renamed St. Andrews until much later.” Her gaze returned to the page. “I came upon her name in the register of births and deaths—I call it my BAD book.”

  Albert wondered why she would do that.

  “B-A-D? Births And Deaths?” she said, in response to the question she imagined in his eyes.

  Those deep, disturbing eyes.

  “Yes. Well,” she cleared her throat and brushed an imaginary crumb from her folds of her cardigan. “Very distinctive name,” she said. “That’s why I remember it. She’s listed as the mother of a son, Robert. I remember the name, because a beau of mine back in the day was Robert. Killed in Korea he was. So far from home. . . Poor boy.”

  ‘Poor Agnes,’ thought Albert.

  He had bitten into a donut once, at Dunkin Donuts, expecting it to be an ordinary donut, like all the other donuts he’d ever had. But it wasn’t. It was full of something that exploded into his mouth. It was an unexpected sensation and, reflexively, he’d gagged it out, decorating a large area near the counter as well as the front of his shirt and two other customers with whatever it was. Some kind of pudding, apparently.

  There had been a lot of it.

  That’s what people were like, pudding-filled donuts. Sometimes the pudding was sweet. Sometimes sour. Sometimes it had curdled and gone bad. You never knew until you bit into it.

  The metaphor was struggling to come together, but he was pretty sure it would make a lot of sense when it did.

  A lot of people died in Korea, for some reason. He’d played a concert in Seoul once, but he hadn’t died. Neither had Huffy or Jeremy Ash.

  Maybe they’d fixed whatever the problem was.

  “She had a son,” said Albert, latching onto what he felt was the salient point.

  “What?” Agnes’s mind had gone walk-about. Perhaps that’s what her sweater was made of, memory lint she’d gathered from pockets of the past. That’s why it smelled of mothballs. “Oh, Mirth! Yes, they had a son.”

  “They?”

  “She and her husband. I’m assuming he was her husband, anyway, though there’s no record of a marriage between them in the church records. F. Shakestaff, his name was.” She leaned toward him, cradling her teacup in her lap, and he leaned back. “Can I entrust a Great Secret to you, Mr. . . .”

  ‘Oh, no!’ thought Albert. Questions were bad enough, but they only took up space in his brain, like too many people in an elevator. Secrets consumed it, like . . . something that consumes things.

  “I’m writing a book.”

  That wasn’t the kind of secret Albert had feared.

  “Well, maybe not a book. Perhaps an article for a scholarly journal. I may begin with a monograph, to test the waters. I haven’t decided yet.”

  Albert had heard his fellow professors talk like this in the teacher’s lounge at The School. As far as he could tell, it was what they did instead of doing whatever it was they were talking about doing.

  He had assumed, wrongly, it turned out, that this was the Great Secret.

  “Now, you’re wondering what it is, aren’t you?”

  “I am?” said Albert, echoing Yahweh who had once said the same thing, but with entirely different punctuation.

  “Shakespeare!”

  Albert turned in his seat, half-expecting to find they had company. There was no one there. He turned back around to find Agnes had leaned even closer during his brief inattention, which caused him to lean even further back. Something made him feel as if he were a character in a Rockwell painting; ‘Mantis and Prey’.

  “Shakespeare!” Agnes ejaculated again.

  “William Shakespeare?” Albert ventured hesitantly. He knew of no other by that name, though he supposed there must have been somewhere at some time.

  “Yes!”

  Why was she yelling ‘Shakespeare’ at him? He hadn’t done anything with him.

  Albert felt like crying. The conversation had seemed to be going so smoothly, from one thing to another. Not that it had produced much fruit, but it had made a kind of sense. Now, without warning, this woman with enlarged eyes was yelling ‘Shakespeare!’ at him, and he had not the least clue why.

  “What about him?” he said. He could feel his lips trembling.

  “It is my belief,” said Agnes, with a quick, furtive glance toward the bushes on the left and right, “that this Robert,” she tapped the table with her f
orefinger—one might have imagined them in a morgue, the corpse of the gentleman in question recumbent beneath that identifying digit—“was umpty-times great grandfather to Richard Shakespeare! Shakestaff as his contemporaries knew him.”

  This, thought Albert, was an Important Thought to this woman. Not wishing to find out what kind of pudding filled the donut that was Agnes Porthwright, he nodded in a circular way that allowed her to read into it whatever she wished.

  “Father to John, of course.”

  There it was again; ‘of course’. Albert made a mental note to look up the term next time he could get his hands on a dictionary. He was pretty sure it didn’t mean what he thought it meant which was something like ‘it’s common knowledge’, which it never was, at least not to him. It probably meant ‘something else Albert doesn’t know.’

  “Father to eight children, the third of whom was . . .?”

  She was asking him?

  “William?” he hazarded tentatively.

  “William Shakespeare! The Sweet Bard of Avon!” she leaned even closer and held the back of her right hand to the left side of her mouth, apparently so whoever was lurking in the bushes wouldn’t hear, “though the family was actually of Rowlington and Snitterfield.” She sat up suddenly, much the way Albert had seen his mother sit up once when stung by a bee when she was gardening. “Hasn’t quite the same ring, does it; ‘Sweet Bard of Snitterfield? Ha, ha!”

  “Mirth was Shakespeare’s grandmother?”

  “Great-grandmother, many times over actually. Yes. At least,” she lowered her eyes and her voice, “that’s what I posit.” She looked up at him. “Of course, the records are not as clear as one might wish. There are lacunae in the church records, especially around the times of religious persecution. But, it makes sense, doesn’t it?”

  She seemed to be trying to convince herself that it did.

  “You never know,” said Albert. He had recently, during an idle hour at Oxburgh Hall, thumbed through a book of Heraldry, which was all about family crests; little shields of paper notable families formed to defend themselves from anonymity. Each crest had a motto or saying, like ‘Choosy mothers choose Jiff’. If he ever had a crest the motto would be ‘You never know’.