by Anna Castle
"Hoi! You, there! Fleming!"
The man turned and growled at him. "You again! What do you want with me?"
Tom slowed to a stop, barely panting. "I want a word with you. About Clara."
"My wife?" The man squared his jaw, emphasizing the cragginess of that feature.
"She says otherwise."
"Then she lies."
Tom's nostrils flared. He wanted to pulverize the man, but he wasn't cup-shot enough to throw the first punch. Then he spotted something that might change the balance.
Trumpet had sped around the other side of the street and was now creeping up behind the Fleming on tiptoe, grinning so broadly his pixie eyes were nearly closed.
Tom fixed his own eyes on the Fleming's face to hold his attention. He tried to ignore the trio of apprentices who, attracted to law student robes like bluebottle flies to a dung heap, were stalking Trumpet in a scathing imitation of his drunken skulk.
Out of a corner of his eye, Tom saw Ben sauntering toward them, hands behind his back, whistling "Fair Phyllis I Saw Sitting All Alone." The Fleming cast him a distracted glance.
The good citizens of Westminster, smelling trouble, scattered to give them a wide berth.
Tom smiled at the Fleming — a bright, friendly smile — and bobbed his head courteously. That confused the jolt-head. Then, by way of making conversation while his confederates gained their positions, he said, "I suppose someone must have told you — your mother, perhaps, or your father, though I doubt you ever knew him — that you're an idle-headed canker. A rank pustule? No? Not even an irksome, crook-pated, pathetical nit?"
The Fleming, his face as red as hot steel, roared and swung a fist like a blacksmith's hammer.
Tom ducked, bounced back up, and popped him on the chin. "God's bollocks!" he wailed as he cradled his injured hand. "What're you made of?"
"Little English," the Fleming sneered. "Perhaps I'll crush you." He set his sack on the ground by his feet and rubbed his hands together. He reared back to give himself plenty of room to swing.
Ben glided in at the critical moment and extended a long leg, causing the Fleming to miss a step, overbalance, and trip over Trumpet, who was crouched behind him with his hands on his knees. He fell flat on his back, where he was pounced upon by three gleeful apprentices and one small gentleman of Gray's.
"Oh, you've dropped your sack." Ben picked it up and hefted it as if trying to guess its weight. He muttered, "Something about this shape . . ."
"Give me that," the Fleming shouted. He reached out a massive arm, plucked one of his diminutive tormentors from his chest, and tossed him aside.
Tom danced around his apprentice-infested adversary, seeking a way to inflict damage on his target without harming any of his allies.
Ben opened the sack and let out a sharp whistle. "Now here's an interesting turn of events." He reached in and pulled out a few sheets of paper.
The Fleming bucked and rolled, scattering boys onto the ground. He surged to his feet and aimed himself toward Ben.
Tom shouted, "Look out!" and leapt in front of his friend. To do what, he had no idea. But this was his fight.
The Fleming thrust him aside with one granite fist to the shoulder. Ben jumped out of reach, dropping the sack. The Fleming scooped it up and plowed past them, nearly trampling Trumpet, who rolled out of his path in the nick of time.
"After him!" Tom yanked Trumpet up and then winced at the pain in his shoulder. He was lucky the man had been off balance.
They pelted after him. "Move!" Tom roared at one of the apprentices, who hopped into a doorway.
The Fleming ran up Chancery Lane. Tom swerved after him, slipped on a heap of horseshit, and caromed into a pieman who was coming the other way. He and the man grabbed each other to keep from going down, but the tray and the pies went flying. Trumpet skidded on his heels behind them, clutching at a signpost and swinging halfway around.
"I'm sorry," Tom said, desperately trying to keep an eye on the Fleming while freeing himself from the pieman's panicky grasp.
The man stared down at his pies, broken and begrimed in the filthy street, and burst into tears. "I'm ruint!"
"Oh, no. Don't cry." Tom glanced up the street. His quarry was gone. He sighed, recognizing defeat. "Please," he said to the pieman. "Let me pay for what I've damaged." He pulled out his purse.
Trumpet delicately plucked the pie tray from the mire and handed it to the pieman with a small bow. The man took it, but kept his eyes on Tom's purse.
"Can't any of these be saved?" Ben studied the mess on the ground. But then they were jostled from behind by a trio of women so absorbed in their chatter that they failed to notice they were mashing good pork pies beneath their feet.
Tom sighed again and fished out a larger coin.
CHAPTER 28
"Now I'm sober again," Tom said. "All that lovely ale, wasted. Let's get a drink on the way home."
"Anywhere but the Antelope," Trumpet said. " Mrs. Sprye will banish me forever if she sees I've been brawling again."
"Worse," Tom said. "She'll banish us along with you."
They stopped at an alehouse off Chancery Lane for a quick draft. Ben and Tom availed themselves of the jakes in back, dabbling their hands in the water barrel after. Tom tucked in his shirt, restored one fallen stocking, and was more or less as good as new. Trumpet, too fastidious to use the stinking privy, was once again bedraggled from head to toe. He went on inside and ordered three large mugs of small ale.
"I'm not through with that clay-brained Fleming," Tom said, lifting his mug. "Why does he run from me? Why can't he answer one simple question?"
Ben and Trumpet exchanged weary looks. "I believe he did," Ben said. "Didn't I hear him say, 'My wife' when you asked him about Clara?"
"She's a married woman, Tom." Trumpet slapped him on the shoulder. "Accept it. But she doesn't live with the brute and I'd say she hates him."
"Who doesn't?" Tom grumbled. "Whether she lives with him or not, he's still popping up everywhere I go, getting up my nose. I'd like to have it out with him once and for all, but—" He rubbed his sore hand ruefully. "And it's uncourteous to draw a blade against an unarmed foe. So I'm stuck with the block-headed whoreson."
"Not for long," Ben said. He'd been reading one of the sheets of paper he'd taken from the Fleming's sack, tilting backward to catch the light from the one miniscule window the alehouse boasted. "He'll soon be lodging in the Tower with his movements well restricted." He waved the page at his friends, his dark eyes gleaming. "This is one of the pamphlets Smythson's letter was warning about. Drink up, camerades! We've got to get these to Mr. Bacon without delay."
Tom gulped the rest of his ale.
"Let me see that." Trumpet took the sheet from Ben, reading it as they walked outside.
Tom slid tuppence to the alewife. "A purse with legs," he muttered, hurrying after them. "What's it say?"
Trumpet handed him the page. He tugged at Ben's sleeve. "We can't go that way."
"It's the straightest path." Ben was facing up Chancery.
Trumpet shook his head. "We have to go around. Mrs. Sprye will see us anywhere on High Holborn. Or her servants will, which is the same thing."
Ben growled but gave in. Banishment from the Antelope was a dire fate for any student at the Inns of Court.
"Wait one moment." Tom held up a finger while he stopped to read the pamphlet. Titled Admonition to the Nobility and People of England and Ireland, it seemed to be about crusades and chivalry. Then he realized that was merely a thin veil over a call to support a Spanish invasion to murder Queen Elizabeth and place a Catholic on the throne of England.
Tom was shocked. He was outraged. He shook the page at his friends. "Who would read such villainous tripe!"
Ben shook his head. "Deluded people, people with romantic fantasies about the past."
"People who have been set down or prevented from rising," Trumpet said. "Not everyone is happy with the way things have changed here. My uncle says�
�"
"Our queen is the greatest monarch in all Christendom." Tom stabbed a finger at Trumpet for emphasis. "The. Greatest. If Mr. Welbeck says different, he's wrong. My father would have him flogged for even thinking otherwise. God's whiskers, I'll flog him myself!"
"Can we at least walk faster if we have to take the long way round?" Ben pleaded. "The Fleming must have been on his way to deliver those pamphlets. If we hurry, we might catch the receiver."
They took the back roads, angling up to pass the western edge of Holborn. The sun sat on the horizon, casting long shadows across the empty farmland. They left the path when it veered north toward the duck pond, cutting straight across the fields. As they passed into the shadow of a large holly, Tom tripped over something thick and soft.
"What the devil?" He stooped to peer beneath the shrub. "Oh, no! Not another one!"
A man lay sprawled full-length under the holly with his arms outstretched as if he had been dragged.
"I don't believe it," Trumpet said. "Why us?"
"It's the Fleming," Ben said. "Look at those shoulders." He bent, took hold of the man's torso, and tugged him over, rolling him out of the shadows so they could see his face. "It's him, all right."
"Oh, horrible!" Trumpet clapped his hands to his face. "Look at his belly. He's been stabbed."
The Fleming's midsection was dark and wet.
Ben smiled grimly. "Well, Tom, it looks as if your angel is a widow after all."
CHAPTER 29
Francis Bacon sat at his desk, writing faster as the evening descended, loath to suffer the break in concentration that rising to light the candles would entail. Pinnock was visiting his family in Hackney and his assistant, Phelippes, had been sent to Dover with a packet of letters, so Francis was obliged to fend for himself.
Someone pounded on his chamber door.
"Intro," he called, without pausing.
"Mr. Bacon?"
"One moment." Francis held up his left index finger, dipped his pen in the inkpot, and dashed off the rest of his sentence. Then he set his quill in its holder and looked up.
Benjamin Whitt stood in the doorway, a troubled expression marring his plain but pleasant features.
"Mr. Whitt? What's amiss?"
"Another body, sir. Another murder."
Francis frowned at him. "Have I been appointed coroner for Gray's Inn?"
"No, sir. Forgive me. But—" Whitt faltered.
Francis relented. He had been appointed, if sub rosa and ad tempus, investigator of suspicious deaths. "Stairs?"
"Stabbed."
"Hm." Francis frowned again. "Like Smythson?"
"No. Less blood. Probably only one or two strikes. It's hard to be certain in the twilight."
"Where?"
"In the fields." Whitt tilted his head toward the west.
"A Gray's man?"
"No, sir. A Fleming."
That was a surprise. Francis blinked, twice. He smiled suddenly. "One so seldom encounters Flemings in the ordinary run of things, yet here they are, thickly populating our recent events." He knew his levity was inappropriate, but he felt a little giddy, as he often did after a period of intense concentration.
"It is odd, sir," Whitt ventured.
Francis composed himself. "Any relation to our limner?"
"Supposedly, he was her husband."
"Supposedly?"
"She said nay, he said yea. Tom quarreled with him on that score scarce half an hour ago, across from the Temple Bar."
"He didn't stab him, I suppose."
"No, sir!" Ben looked chagrined. "We all got a bit involved in the affray. But the Fleming ran away unharmed."
"Hm." Clarady's affaires de coeur were unlikely to be relevant. Francis ran a hand over his head and glanced out the window. It would soon be fully dark. "I suppose you want me to come look at him?"
"Yes, sir. I wouldn't bother you, but for this." Whitt stepped forward to hand him a printed sheet of paper.
Francis unfolded it and leaned back toward the window. A single glance told him everything. "Oh, dear." He caught Ben's eyes. "The pamphlets from Smythson's letter."
"Yes, sir. And today is the seventeenth. The half moon?"
Francis clucked his tongue. "I'd forgotten all about the date." He skimmed the page while Whitt explained how he had obtained the sample. The prose was elegant in places. He smelled the involvement of the English Jesuit College in Rheims. Catholic missionizing aimed at England was the principal export of that community.
He should have known better. Shiveley's death had been too convenient, too timely, too well aligned with what he had wanted to find. He cast his mind back to the scene in Shiveley's chambers. In his eagerness to be done with the matter, he'd overlooked a number of details that ought to have been pursued. He gazed bleakly at his quill and inkpot. He'd have to write to his uncle again to retract his earlier pronouncement of success. His hopes of a swift end to exile were snuffed out. And he still had a murderer and conspirator to catch.
"Well, let's go have a look at him." Francis rose from his desk and glanced down into the yard. Three men were jogging past the hall toward the gap between buildings that gave access to the fields. "You couldn't have chosen a worse time to find another body: right before supper during a mesne vacation. No one has anything better to do than gawk."
Except me. He fetched his rabbit-lined cloak from the inner chamber and followed Whitt outside. One might almost believe that these murders were deliberately intended to prevent him from producing an historic Reading.
***
They rounded his building and passed through the gap. A man ran past them, returning to the hall, shouting, "Your Grace! Your Grace!"
Francis's head whipped around. There had been no dukes in England since Catholic Norfolk lost his head for conspiring with the Scottish queen. Then he remembered: the Prince of Purpoole and his court of Misrule.
He quickened his pace. "We must hurry. We'll have a crowd in a minute."
No need to wonder how the news had spread. The privateer's son was stomping about the landscape, gesticulating wildly, shaking a piece of paper at the Trumpington boy. A few heated words carried toward them on the wind: "— a perfidious popish plot that my father —"
It would seem that the vaunted loyalty of privateers was not altogether feigned. Still, there were appropriate times for expressions of patriotic fervor. This was not one of them.
Glancing over his shoulder, Francis saw clusters of men standing at the windows of Colby's Building, watching the scene in the fields. He spoke urgently to Ben. "He must stop that shouting."
Whitt called, "Tom!" He made a throat-slicing motion with his index finger.
Clarady responded with a wide-armed questioning gesture. At least he stifled his ranting.
They covered the few remaining yards and joined the other two. Clarady awaited them with his hands on his hips. Trumpington was pacing around the holly bush, peering at the ground as if searching for something. He straightened now to face the newcomers.
"We only have a minute." Francis pitched his voice low. "I strongly advise that we keep the elements of our prior investigations to ourselves."
Clarady winced, shamefaced. But perhaps his shouts had not been clearly heard. The wind was blowing from the east.
"We mustn't alert the conspirator to our special interest in this matter." Francis turned now to look at the source of the trouble. The light was rapidly fading, their shadows stretching back toward the Inn. Even thus dimly revealed, the sight was repellent. The man had been enormous, barrel-chested with massive limbs. Yet now he lay slack and wasted on the ground. Francis's eyes skittered across the darkened midsection, glistening thickly in the twilight glow. He recoiled, tasting a bitter gorge, as if someone had forced a noxious potion down his throat. He shuddered and turned his back.
He spoke to Trumpington. "Did you find anything?"
"Me?"
"Weren't you looking? Just now?"
The boy shrugged. "Not reall
y. Well, a little. It's too dark to see. There isn't anything, anyway. Sir."
He seemed distracted. Francis could see no special reason for it in the situation at hand. Granted, the sight of this body was disturbing, more so than he would have expected. After all, the fellow had been a stranger. Why should the mere sight of a corpse elicit such a reaction? Or perhaps it was the sharp smell of fresh blood? The ominous effect of the lowering light? It was curious — and frustrating — how little control one's intellect had over one's visceral responses.
He shook his head. This was no time for introspection. He turned to Whitt. "You mentioned a sack."
Whitt said, "Yes, sir." Then to the others: "Isn't it here?"
"No sack." Clarady sounded thoroughly disgusted. "The poxy traitor must have taken it."
"It might still be out here somewhere." Trumpington frowned at Clarady. "We can make a thorough search in the morning."
"Morning will be too late," Francis said. "The sack must have been received by the conspirator. Otherwise it would surely still be in the Fleming's possession."
"He might have hidden it nearby," Trumpington said. "He might have wanted to hold it back until he got his money."
"Did you find a purse?" Francis asked.
The boy blanched. "I didn't look. I didn't want to put my hands . . ."
Francis shuddered. "No, of course not. Hm. Well, I see no sensible reason to hide the goods before meeting with their receiver. We'll assume the sack is now in possession of our conspirator." He paused. "Do we know the Fleming's name?"
The lads shook their heads.
"No matter." He tried to think of other useful observations that could be made at this point. That the man had been stabbed, like Smythson, was probably relevant. The lack of frenzy could be the result of prior experience. If this were indeed the killer of Smythson and, he must now suppose, Shiveley, he was growing accustomed to violence. Which consideration leant greater urgency to the need to apprehend him.
His thoughts were interrupted by Treasurer Fogg's voice booming across the field. "Hold the rest back! Let no more into the field until further notice."
