by Anna Castle
This night, this one night in all her sad life, she, Clara Goossens, would know love.
She took his hands, drawing him silently up the long stair to her narrow room. She lifted the lute from his shoulders and laid it on her worktable. She undressed him, untying every lace with care. He stood and let her take her time, a glittering fire in his eyes.
At last he was naked, as tall and well formed as a Roman statue. She pulled off her shift in one smooth motion and took him to her bed. There she reveled in him, loving him in every way she knew, with her clever hands, her wise heart, and her eager body.
***
Clara woke to see daylight streaming through her window. She sighed and stretched, deliberately rubbing the length of her body against Tom's. That woke him, barely. He murmured something in her ear, tickling her with his warm breath and short beard, sending shivers of pleasure racing across her skin. She giggled and he wrapped his arms around her, loving her with strength and tenderness. And then again.
He's too young for me. He feathered kisses lightly across her face, her neck, her breasts, and her belly. He's too high above me. He captured her lips and warmed her to the core with a deep kiss. She stopped worrying about the future for a few delicious minutes more.
***
Tom awoke with a start. Church bells were tolling eight of the clock, and someone was pounding on a door somewhere far away, loud, echoing. Three blows and a pause. Three blows and a pause, like a sledge hammering a nail.
Where was he?
Then he felt her in his arms, warm and soft and smelling of woman and roses and faintly of paint. Clara, his angela luminosa, truly his at last. He smiled to himself as he nuzzled Clara's shoulder, inhaling her rich fragrance, storing it up in his memory like hay stacked in a deep barn.
He'd had sex before, naturally; he was no stripling boy. He and Stephen had sampled most of the brothels in Smithfield. He'd had his share of tavern wenches in empty chambers and dairy maids in haystacks and even once a restless wife in the musty storeroom behind her shop.
Women wanted him, and he was generous by nature.
This was different. He loved Clara and she loved him. Love made the act transcendental. "Angela mia," he whispered into her downy neck. "Ti adoro."
Ah, he'd woken her. No, she had been awake and savoring this moment too. She stirred and started to sit up. He snuggled her closer to his chest. "It's someone with a tooth that needs pulling. Naught to do with us."
"I do not believe so." Clara wriggled against him for a blissful moment then slapped him on the arm. He released her. She sat up, clutching a corner of the blanket to cover her breasts, for the warmth.
Which Tom knew because they had left modesty far behind last night.
He propped himself up on one elbow. "What else could it be on a Sunday morning?"
She hissed at him to be silent and listened intently to the sounds of the house. A murmur of voices below, some of them men's by their pitch, but what of it? A surgeon's hours were not fixed like a goldsmith's.
A patter of slippers on the wooden stairs stopped outside Clara's door, followed by a series of sharp raps.
Clara didn't call out to ask who it was. She slid from the bed and wrapped her cloak around her naked body and opened the door the barest sliver. "Wat is het?"
Tom hoped it was something easily managed. He wanted to explore her all over again, from her nose to her toes, in full daylight, using his eyes this time as well as his hands and his lips. He had also been hoping for a chance to leave her room unnoticed. He'd meant to slip out at dawn, but it was too late for that. Perhaps everyone would go to church. He grinned. Perhaps he'd be forced to spend the whole day in Clara's bed.
Alas, no. Clara and the woman on the other side of the door spoke in Flemish, but their mounting alarm needed no translation. Tom knew the sound of trouble when he heard it.
The whispers ended. Clara shut the door and leaned against it, staring at Tom with terror in her eyes. Her palpable fear sent a jolt right through him.
He leapt from the bed and wrapped his arms around her, gathering her into the shelter of his body. "What is it, my darling?"
"They are here for me." She tilted her face to him.
"Who? What? Why? I won't let them."
She shook her head. "Nay, you cannot help me."
"It's about him, isn't it? That pusillanimous varlet. Your late and unlamented husband." Tom had told her, in the whispers of the night, about the Fleming's murder.
"They want to question me, she says. They will take me to Newgate."
"Newgate!" The prison was notorious. He took her face in both his hands and held her gaze, willing his strength into her heart. "I will protect you, my angel."
She smiled wanly, but shook her head. "You cannot. The undersheriff is here himself with a letter."
"A pox on the undersheriff and his letters!"
They helped each other into their clothes. They combed their hair and splashed water on their faces from the bowl on Clara's nightstand. They stood face-to-face in the center of the small room and gave each other a final inspection. However tidy their appearance, Tom's mere presence on the scene at such an hour guaranteed what conclusions would be drawn by those below.
The bottom of the stair was blocked by a group of women who stood with linked arms, glaring at a pair of burly constables. They parted to allow Clara and Tom to descend, gaping at Tom and whispering in Flemish after they had passed. The constables leered and snickered, making Clara blush.
Tom's own cheeks burned. He glanced at her, but she kept her eyes riveted on the rush-strewn floor. He'd made her a whore by emerging from her bedchamber so early on a Sunday morning. He hoped he could make up for it by sending this undersheriff packing. He was a gentleman of the Inns of Court after all. At least, he was dressed like one.
Elizabeth Moulthorne stood in her surgery, clutching a blue woolen cloak about her neck. She glowered furiously at a man wearing a large pewter badge.
"Are you one Clara Goossens?" The undersheriff read the name from the letter he held in his flabby hand, mangling the pronunciation and making Clara sound like a backward goose girl.
The man had a sunken chest, a vast, round arse, and pinstick legs. Worse, he had dressed himself in a putrid mustard color that emphasized his florid complexion. Tom wished Stephen was here to share his contempt for this sartorial disaster. And to play the lord, summoning centuries of inherited hauteur to send this minion packing.
Tom was suddenly keenly aware of his own powerlessness. Absurd as this paunchy man might look, he had authority in the badge on his chest and the document in his hand. Not to mention the burly constables, either one of whom was a match for Tom. A sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach told him the cause was lost.
He wrapped a protective arm around Clara. "What is the meaning of this intrusion? Don't you know today is the Sabbath?"
The undersheriff attempted to look down his nose at Tom but failed since he was the shorter by several inches. "I have a warrant for the arrest of one Clara Goossens, Fleming, resident of this house."
"On what charge?"
"She's wanted for questioning in the death of her husband." The pewling official consulted his letter. "One Caspar Von Ruppa, also a Fleming. Murdered by stabbing to death with a knife."
Gasps arose from the women on the stairs. "Oh, Clara!" one said. "You shouldn't have!"
"I never did!" Clara cried.
"Of course she didn't kill him," Tom said. "She couldn't have. I am he who discovered the corpus. We came upon it only moments after the deed was done. The Widow Goossens was nowhere in the vicinity during the critical interval." He struggled for legal terms, formal terms, anything that would make him sound more important than the youthful lover he was.
"No one claims that she herself held the knife that killed him." The undersheriff clearly meant to imply that she had arranged for that knife, however. "She is merely wanted for questioning."
"She can be questioned here, t
hen, in the company of her landlady and of myself."
"No. She is to be taken to Newgate Prison and held there at the pleasure of the queen until this matter has been resolved."
"By whose order?" Tom reached his hand toward the official. "Let me see that letter."
"The warrant is signed by one Sir Avery Fogg, Treasurer of Gray's Inn."
"What!" Tom released Clara and stepped forward to snatch the letter from the man's hand. He read it through rapidly. Sure enough, there was Fogg's signature at the bottom.
Why hadn't he paid more attention when they'd gone to observe the courts in Westminster? He'd spent most of the term whispering jokes, mocking costumes and mannerisms, instead of learning the law. Now he needed it. If only Ben were here, or even Trumpet. He wanted to howl his rage to the rafters and lift this tottering undershit by the ears and shake him into pieces.
But he couldn't. He could do nothing but stand with clenched fists and flaming cheeks, impotent, while the undersheriff tilted his chin at the constables. They laid their sweaty hands upon Clara's slender frame and bore her, weeping, out the door and into a waiting cart.
"Tom!" she wailed, the hopelessness in her voice shredding his heartstrings.
He followed the cart down the lane, stumbling on lumps of garbage, heedless of his velvet slippers. "I'll get you out. I promise you, sweetling."
CHAPTER 33
The stench of Newgate Prison was overwhelming. Clara's eyes burned and watered, adding the shame of tears to her misery. She wanted to appear confident that her powerful friends would soon secure her release. She wanted to hold tight to what shreds of dignity she could because she feared that if she wailed and whimpered, the guards would think her friendless and treat her with cruelty as well as contempt.
She felt screams rising from her belly, tasted bile in the back of her throat, and swallowed both down.
She feared to weep, but she was helpless to stem the water streaming from her eyes. The stink was like a force, a gale, a hurricano of foulness. Countless years of human waste and sweat and sickness lay heaped in rotting piles of straw. The stench made the privy shared by the members of Clara's household and the other houses around their yard seem like a garden in June.
One night of abandon in all her careful, cautious years — one single night of love — and down came her punishment, swift and absolute. From paradise to perdition in a stroke. This was Caspar's doing. Even in death, he found a way to reach out and torment her.
The guards were not kind, not in any tiny way, but they did not molest her. They barely spoke to her. They took her mother's ring for their entrance fee. Clara did not understand how they could charge her a fee for putting her in prison, but they could do as they liked with her now. Her ring was by far the least terrible price she could imagine paying.
They led her into a cell no larger than her room at home, but this place held no bed, no chest, no sunlit worktable. One small barred window kept the cell from utter darkness. Layers of filthy straw covered the floor, heaped up in places to form beds. One sodden corner apparently served as the privy. Two women sat in the straw, blinking at the sudden light from the open door. Clara could not begin to guess their ages. Their faces were ravaged by pox and poverty, but their limbs seemed sound, and they were agile enough as they rose to their feet. They leered at Clara with gap-toothed grins.
"Oooo, what's this, then?"
"What 'ave ye brought us, Jarman, me love?"
Clara shrank back, unwilling to step across the threshold. The guard pushed her forward, hard enough to send her stumbling into the arms of her new cellmates.
"Don't muss 'er up too much, dearies," the gaoler said with a chuckle. "I'll wager she's worth a shilling or two."
"What'll be our share, eh?" the darker one asked. She got no answer. Whether she was swarthy from birth or from layers of dirt, Clara did not care to guess.
The door swung shut, leaving her in a gray gloom.
"’Er looks a lady, Millicent, don't ’er?"
"Nar, Gracie, ’er's no lady. ’Er's a shopkeeper or a smith's wife or the like."
"Clean," Millicent said. Clara felt thick fingers crawling through her hair, plucking out the pins that Tom had helped her place that morning.
"Nice shoes," Grace said. Clara felt her shoes being tugged from her feet. She tried to pull her legs back and got a sharp pinch on the thigh. "Be still, or pinches ain't all ye'll get."
"This hair's worth a penny or two," Millicent said. A ragged fingernail scraped Clara's ear as her hair was pulled back. "Reckon Jarman'd lend us a scissor if we split the take?"
"Shoes're mine," Grace said. "Warm, they are. An’ look: they fit me perfect."
Clara closed her eyes and willed herself into the nowhere that had been her refuge when Caspar beat her.
CHAPTER 34
Tom spent the better part of an hour alternately pleading, bribing, and threatening the officials at Newgate to let him at least visit Clara to see how she was housed. No one would listen to him. He went outside and prowled the perimeter, hopping up to peer through barred windows, craning his neck. Hands were thrust out at him, waving and grasping. Inmates pressed their grimy faces against the bars to jeer at him or whisper coarse promises. He had to leap aside to avoid a stream of piss that one brainsick prisoner launched at him.
"Tom!" He whirled around. Ben and Trumpet jogged across the street.
"We're going to St. Paul's to hear the sermon." Trumpet looked him up and down. "Your shoes are a disgrace."
Tom gaped at him like a man bereft of human speech.
"What's wrong?" Ben asked.
He told them everything from the moment he'd left Gray's the night before, leaving out the private bits. He handed Ben the letter, which he had carefully stowed in his purse.
Ben clasped his arm. "Tom, hear me. Newgate is filthy and verminous and the other inmates may be fairly nasty, but they'll not harm her. Neither the prisoners nor the guards. Not seriously. There's time to negotiate."
"Are you sure?" Tom eagerly grasped at the straw.
"Nearly sure." Ben rubbed his dark beard. "Let's go talk to Mr. Bacon."
"No. Mrs. Sprye," Trumpet said. "She'll want to know what her dear Sir Avery has been up to."
"Mrs. Sprye." Tom allowed himself to breathe again. "She'll know what to do, and she'll make Fogg do it."
"This is all wrong," Ben said.
"No, it's exactly right." Tom felt strength returning to his sinews. "We need to talk to Mrs. Sprye at once. And then Mr. Bacon. Between the two of them —"
"No, this letter is all wrong," Ben said. "It's not Fogg's hand, for one thing. You've seen it yourself on those endless notices the benchers post about not wearing velvet shoes and getting a shave every three weeks."
"I knew there was something wrong with it!" Tom crowed.
"And the language is too simple." Ben handed the letter to Trumpet, who had been tugging on his sleeve. "Fogg uses more Latin. I tell you, Tom, Treasurer Fogg did not write this letter."
"Then who did?"
CHAPTER 35
Clara sat, head bowed, on the dank floor, wearing only her shift and underskirt. The rest of her clothes had been stripped off by her fellow inmates.
The cell door groaned open and the guard stood in the sudden frame of light. "Hoi! I told you to leave 'er be."
"'Tis only 'er clothes," Millicent whined.
"She's got friends, I tell you. Look — they sent’er a basket already."
Clara's eyes snapped open. Tom! He hadn't forgotten her.
"Mine!" Millicent and Grace scuffled forward, hands outstretched and fingers grasping.
"No, no, no! It's’er present. She orter get first dibs." The guard shoved the whores aside and set the basket in Clara's lap. Her hands curled around it protectively, though she knew it would be snatched away from her the minute the door closed.
"What'd they tip you, then, eh Jarman? Somethin' 'andsome?"
"Wouldn't you like to know?" Jarman chuckled as
he left.
"Gracie," Millicent breathed. Clara recoiled from the black stink that flowed from her rotten mouth. Even as she turned her head, she registered surprise that she was becoming able to distinguish degrees of foulness. God help her when this hellhole no longer stank!
"A bottle o' tinto, by all me dead 'usbands’ sufferin' souls!"
Millicent's arm plunged into Clara's basket and withdrew a bottle with a long cork. "Ahhhh," she sighed. "'Ere's me lovely."
She took her prize over to the largest heap of straw and pulled the cork with a resounding pop. She sat back against the oozing wall, stretched her legs before her, and took a long draught.
"A cheese! A 'ole cheese! An' bread, Millie, by your 'usbands’!" Grace snatched the largest lump in the basket and retired to her own tuft of straw.
Clara was left alone, mercifully, in the middle of the cell with the basket in her lap. She didn't mind the thefts; on the contrary, she was grateful for the distraction. Her undressers had not been gentle. Her body was bruised and scraped from their pinches and rough hands. She had feared they would strip her stark naked, leaving her to freeze in the night.
She turned her eyes to the basket, letting her vision adjust to the sparse light. She ran her hands over the contents: hard rolls, a sausage, apples, even a napkin. A hearty meal under other circumstances. She couldn't imagine being able to eat in this place. She hoped she wouldn't be here long enough to learn otherwise. She was surprised to find no note. It wasn't like Tom to send her a gift without one of his foolish sonnets to go with it. She smiled bitterly. The sight of his writing, even in light too dim for reading, would have given her some sense of him, some comfort.
