Knaves Templar

by Leonard Tourney

  “In your room?”

  “Yes. The night is cold and it’s a dreary walk and dangerous to the Middle Temple at this hour.”

  Leyland held out the spoon. It crossed Phipps’s mind it might be poison he drank, but he was almost too weary to care. He sipped the liquid. It was bitter and tasted a litde like almonds.

  He felt Nan Warren take his arm gently. She whispered seductively, “Come, Theophilus.”

  She led him to her own room and invited him to lie in her bed. She said nothing of what he must pay for the privilege. He felt his eyes close; heard the ringing of the hour from St. Paul’s. He did not sleep at once but lay thinking of all that had happened and what it meant and what Leyland had meant by his hint of a more lucrative transaction in which he might become involved. Was this, then, what Litchfield had alluded to in his promise of future wealth or some covert enterprise reserved for a choice few? He was still contemplating these possibilities when a delicious warmth stole over him, and his physical pain and dreams of wealth vanished in a wondrous transport of happiness.

  Leyland sent his mother to bed downstairs at the same time Nan escorted Phipps to her room. Then she returned, closed the door, and the two talked.

  “What on earth did you have in mind when you hinted to Phipps that he might be one with us?” Nan asked sharply.

  “You’ll see, my dear,” Leyland said nonchalantly. “What were you thinking when you invited that sniveling miscreant to share your bed?” Leyland was sitting in a chair by the desk with his legs thrust out before him.

  “I invited him to sleep in my bed, not with me, for I shall sleep here with you, my love,” she answered coldly. “Answer my question. What is your plan?”

  “He knows everyone, and his usury has made him rich, I think—he does not have to wheedle money from a scrupulous parent. That has been our trouble all along.”

  “Our trouble has been a lack of discretion,” she said seriously. “That was Litchfield’s trouble—and Giles’s. Now you would take in Phipps, by your own description a miscreant for whom the word secrecy has no meaning whatsoever. You must be stark mad. ”

  “Mad like a fox,” said Leyland.

  “We are the foxes indeed,” Nan said, “and the Stocks are the hounds. You heard what Phipps said. It was Joan Stock who probed your desk and found my husband’s ledger.”

  “And what will she find there—old moldy records of treatments and fees? A lot of good that will do her or that husband of hers.”

  “My husband’s name is written in the flyleaf,” Nan said. “What if she takes notice of that and connects him with the Prideaux on Giles’s list?”

  “Oh, what if she does?” said Leyland impatiently. “She doesn’t know who you are but a fallen woman turned virtuous. Besides, they are looking for a man, not a woman. If Giles hadn’t recognized you from your husband’s trial and put you down as Prideaux, the only name he knew you by, you would never have been connected with the others.” “He paid the price for that treason,” she said. “But what if Joan Stock sees the name inscribed in the ledger—and finds out what stuff the vial contains? Will she not think you are Prideaux, since ledger and vial were found in your desk?” Waiting for his answer, Nan studied the hairy face of her accomplice. Leyland was slow but he was sure, and her quicker wit and his physical strength made an excellent match, to her way of thinking. He grinned confidently and said: “I think there’s little chance of that.”

  She said, “I think what I have said is more than probable. Yet I wish it were otherwise. If my words prove true, Joan Stock and her husband will have to go.”

  “Home to Chelmsford?”

  “To Heaven or the Devil,” she said matter-of-factly. “I’ve come too far to lose all now. Who knows? They may by some chance put the puzzle together. See how industrious Stock’s wife is in collecting the pieces. We must serve up one last piece—our friend Phipps, perhaps—and then good night to them all.”

  “You’re not doing this for the money, are you, but for vengeance?” Leyland said, regarding her curiously.

  She tossed her head and laughed. “Greed is a petty motive, worthy only of base scoundrels. An honest revenge is another matter entirely, and I have cause, good Doctor Ley-land, believe me. Besides,” she said, looking at him directly and growing solemn again so that her face took on a masculine hardness, “what does it matter to you? You provide the dreams for our fat lawyerly calves and milk ’em good. Therefore never ask why, but only who next and how much. ’’

  Twenty

  MASTER Leyland is Prideaux,” Joan declared, too certain to mince words.

  This was the first news from her mouth the next morning when she arrived at Matthew’s chamber and had determined that Phipps was not lurking there to eavesdrop. “I found proof.”

  ‘‘What proof?” he asked.

  She disregarded the defensive tone of the question, the silent assertion of male logicality that always irked her. Knowing the ledger was irrefutable proof, she could afford to be patient, even generously so. Matthew was already dressed and fed, looked his old self, and had forsaken the crutch, although he still walked with a slight limp, like an old soldier.

  Joan showed him the ledger, opening it to the flyleaf and thrusting it in his face as though the book spoke for itself. ‘‘This I found in the desk in Leyland’s study.” She sat on the edge of the bed opposite him and began to tell all that she had done after leaving him the previous afternoon.

  He listened, but did not soften. He seemed harder, more critical. ‘‘I can’t believe you did all that,” he said when she had concluded her tale. “Surely this was some dream you had and have confused with waking.”

  “No dream, husband,” she said, offended at the suggestion. “Before you is the proof of that too. And this,” she said, handing him the vial.

  He looked at the vial. It was ordinary, he said. He noted the maker’s mark on its bottom—a little cross and base. Then he began to scold her for her recklessness, reciting her crimes: trespassing, breaking and entering, theft. Not to speak of the danger—prowling the City by night, with only a drunken groom as a companion.

  She shrugged at all the husbandly admonishments and brought him back to the point. “But, Matthew, what do you make of the ledger, with Prideaux’s name written therein? Is it not proof positive of what I have long suspected?” Sighing with exasperation, he examined the signature and then turned the leaves of the ledger. “The name is Christopher Prideaux,” he conceded. “The same of Norwich, unless there are two apothecaries by that name. ”

  “Reason staggers at such a thought!” she said.

  “Ah, but why would Giles have written the name of a dead man on his list? Leyland cannot be our Prideaux. This ledger proves only that he was in possession of the man’s book. Present possession isn’t proof, Joan. If I acquire my neighbor’s horse with his mark upon its bridle, I do not become my neighbor. I do not become his horse. But remain myself.”

  “Oh, Matthew,” Joan groaned.

  “See, Joan, I haven’t been entirely idle since we last talked. I found this treasure. Here, read for yourself.”

  Joan took the sheet of heavy paper offered her. It was rumpled and tom around the edges and smudged with dirt as though it had traveled through many hands. Printed in large block letters at the top of the sheet was the title A True and Faithful Account of the Wicked Apothecary of Norwich.

  With mounting excitement and persuaded that whatever she was to learn from the broadside would only make a stronger case, she began to read. After a summary of Prideaux’s career was a graphic account of his victims, including the daughter of one leading citizen of the town who died from Prideaux’s ministrations. It mentioned as well that he had seduced another well-bred young woman and impregnated her, but she too was presumed dead. The apothecary’s wife, it said this same woman was. The broadside purported to give the last words of the miscreant, a garbled confession full of such sentences that Joan had many times before seen attributed to repentant
criminals for the moral edification of the public. There was also a picture, crudely drawn, of Pri-deaux. It showed a thin man in his twenties with sharp, hawklike features, a receding hairline, and a little scraggly pointed beard like that the Devil was said to grow. Joan wondered if the artist had drawn from life or only from his imagination, imputing to a man he never met an appearance compatible with his reputation.

  “Well,” she said when she had read the text twice over. “Prideaux as represented here looks no more like Leyland than you do. Leyland is stocky and broad-shouldered with a square head.” She asked Matthew where he had found the broadside, and he said he had found it among Giles’s books, some of which had remained in his old chamber.

  Joan slumped, suddenly disappointed in her find. She realized that Matthew was right—just because she had come upon the ledger among Leyland’s things did not mean it was his or that he was really Prideaux. On the other hand, Matthew’s discovery of the broadside in Giles’s book did prove that Giles was mindful of his sister’s murderer even after his sister and Prideaux had been dead five years. These were not matters a man could readily forget or forgive. Yet desperate to justify the value of her dangerous expedition to Bishops-gate Street, she tried another interpretation:

  “Could Prideaux have been Mistress Browne’s husband, the one that is dead?”

  “Too old,” Matthew said, shaking his head, his brow creased with thought. “Prideaux was a young man, younger than Leyland, and Leyland is Mistress Browne’s son, you said. Besides, other explanations offer themselves. Say this Mistress Browne’s husband or perhaps Leyland himself purchased Prideaux’s books from some bookseller. This ledger may have been among a lot of them.”

  ‘‘What value to him an old ledger of another man?” she said, her turn to be skeptical. ‘‘And what of the other things I saw—this vial and the alembic? Mistress Browne threatened me with its contents, said it was a deadly poison to snuff out the overcurious.”

  ‘‘As for the alembic, flasks, and vials,” he said, “these may be the stock of the alchemist indeed, yet they are the tools of the apothecary as well. But even if Leyland is an alchemist, that’s no crime. The Queen has her Doctor Dee to cast her horoscope. His alchemical experiments are well known. I hesitate to think that Master Leyland is other than he seems, an honest physician. Did he not attend me in good order? See how I can move about now. I have cast off that wretched crutch. Why, the pain is almost gone. Leyland’s mother may be a shrew, but that does not taint the son, who must stand or fall on his own account.”

  She thought about this and felt her conviction weaken even further. She had taken a desperate chance in venturing back into the laboratory and removing the ledger and vial. Was it really all for naught? She looked at the vial again and said: “The ledger I will keep for what it yet may be worth. As for this vial, I am curious to know its contents. The friendly apothecary who first informed me of Prideaux of Norwich may be able to determine what this little vessel contains that invited Mistress Browne to use it as a threat. ”

  “From what you tell me of her character, the terrible woman could have used plain water for the purpose.”

  “Oh, I doubt this is plain water,” Joan said. “I saw the manner of its concoction.”

  “Well, it might be poison and still be nothing to our purpose.”

  “What, Matthew, how so?”

  “It does not follow that because Mistress Browne said the vial was poison that it was; nor that if it be poison, she ever used it; nor that if she did, she also killed the lawyers. ”

  She paused to take her husband’s reasoning in, thinking at the same time that it was an intolerably smug expression etched upon his face and determined not to betray her intuition. “Each day you sound more and more like a lawyer, Matthew. Pray God you finish this business with dispatch and hie home to your own true self to Chelmsford.”

  The smugness was replaced with a familiar grin, and she liked him again. He said, “Very well, Joan. By all means, go ask this helpful apothecary of yours. Satisfy your curiosity. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, I say. You will either find out something to the purpose or his knowledge will put your mind to rest about Leyland. I am not so much of Hutton’s opinion that Keable is our man to deter you.”

  “I shall go,” she said with as much dignity as she could muster. “By the way, where is Phipps? He’s early risen and gone abroad.”

  “I wouldn’t know, ’’ Matthew said. ‘‘He never came home last night, nor have I seen him this morning.”

  “Now, that’s very strange,” Joan said.

  Matthew shrugged. “I can’t say I miss him.”

  “And how will you spend your time?”

  “At Master Osborne’s rehearsal. Tonight is the performance itself. I have yet to talk to Keable. He was nowhere to be found yesterday afternoon or evening. His chamber-fellow, Wilson, didn’t know where he was.”

  “Keable gone? Phipps gone? What does it mean, Matthew?”

  She was gratified that he who thought he knew so much had no answer to her question.

  When Matthew came to the Hall, Osborne and company were already in the midst of their rehearsal. Matthew quickly spotted Keable. He had not shared with Joan his fear that Keable’s disappearance and Phipps’s might mean the two men had become die latest victims of the Templar murderer. Keable was in his satyr costume, a coarse, tightly fitting suit faced with shaggy fur, and slippers resembling goat’s feet. His face had been stained dark to give him a menacing expression. Wilson, as the lovely Clorinda, was almost beyond recognition. Wigged in blond tresses, powdered, and painted, he had been transformed into a vision of conventional feminine pulchritude. Though attired in a splendid gown of green and gold, and generously bosomed, he still moved about with the awkwardness of the boy he was. Since the rehearsal was proceeding without interruptions from Osborne, Matthew could hardly do more than wait its conclusion. When, after an hour or more, Osborne congratulated the players and announced, to a chorus of groans, that they should do all the play over a second time, Matthew was too weary of sitting to endure it again and decided to leave.

  He made an inconspicuous exit through a side door, thinking it might give him access to the garden, and found himself instead in a kind of cloakroom or, as it was called in the theaters, a tiring house. Here evidently Osborne’s players had changed from their caps and gowns into their costumes, for clothing was strewn all about, draped on stools and chairs and hung on hooks along the walls, and everything scattered and disorderly as though the players had all changed in haste. There was a little table in the comer and a row of stools beneath, and beside the table was an open chest the size of a carpenter’s toolbox. Matthew looked inside and saw no hammers or saws but jars of dyes, washes, and paints, and several good bristle brushes and a little mirror with a hinge on its back and powders in boxes and an assortment of jewelry-brooches, medallions, and rings, all of which, on closer inspection, proved to be made of glass or paste. Fascinated by this paraphernalia and aware that Keable must return to this room in order to divest himself of his costume, Matthew decided to bide his time by exploring the contents further with no more serious intent than to satisfy his curiosity as how players managed to remake their appearance—to lighten or darken their natural complexions, make great their eyes, or turn pale lips ruddy. In the midst of this casual inspection he saw that several of the little vessels in the box were like the vial Joan had taken from Leyland’s study. They were pear-shaped and corked, but filled with fucus and other stains, not the amber liquid Joan had fetched home and thought was poison. Then, at the very bottom of the box, he saw another of the vials—this one empty except for a moist residue. Pulling out the cork, he raised the vial to his nose and detected the same odor that had sprung from Joan’s vial, while he saw etched into the glass the tiny cross and base that was the manufacturer’s mark.

  A noise behind him caused him to jump and instinctively thrust the vial into his pocket. He turned and saw that it was Keable.
/>   “Master Stock. I thought you had gone.”

  Matthew got to his feet. “Evidently. I have been looking for you since yesterday noon.”

  “I had pressing business—in the City,” Keable explained, not very convincingly. “What did you want of me?” “Master Hutton suggested you might help me with some information.”

  Keable reached down into the open box and drew out the mirror. He sat it up on the table and then picked up a coarse cloth and began slowly wiping the stain from his face. “Could your questions not wait until later in the day? You see how busy I am now. I had to take my leave of my fellow players—a pressing appointment in the City, for which I dare not be late.”

  “I will be brief,” said Matthew in a peremptory tone. “Besides, it’s best that we speak privately.”

  Keable stopped wiping his face with the cloth and looked up at Matthew.

  ‘‘I understand you observed a secret meeting of Litchfield, Monk, and Osborne too. In Monk’s chambers.”

  Keable shrugged. “That’s news to me, sir. I never saw any such thing. Besides, why should such a matter interest you even if it were true?”

  “I ask on my son’s behalf,” Matthew said. “It’s of interest to me if there are conspiracies in motion here. Naturally I want no son of mine keeping company with traitors.” Keable laughed nervously. “You have been deceived by loose talk, Master Stock. There was never such a conspiracy, and if there was, I never heard tell of it.”

  “Master Phipps says otherwise.”

  Keable laughed again, even less convincingly. “Theophi-lus Phipps is a very inventive gentleman—and a notorious gossip. He will tell any story to make himself the center of attention, but a wise man will take half of what he says as pure falsehood and the other with the proverbial grain of salt.”

  “Yet it seems a probable tale,” Matthew said, not content to allow Keable such an easy retreat. “All those reported to have been present are dead—save one, perhaps—and that argues some subtle connection not inconsistent with treasonous confederacy.”