The Widows Guild: A Francis Bacon Mystery (The Francis Bacon Mystery Series Book 3)

by Anna Castle

  Verboom peered at him over the rim of his spectacles. “How well do you trust the observations of these young persons?”

  “Very well indeed. How not? I trained them both myself.”

  “You have trained a young lady in such arts?”

  “No, no.” Francis held up both hands to erase the ill-considered remark. “Of course not. How absurd! I scarcely know her. Ha! Nonsense.” He felt a flash of irritation at Trumpet for complicating his ability to make a simple remark without subterfuge. “I meant the student. I am responsible for his training, naturally. He has made some researches on my behalf before, and I have been satisfied with his work.”

  “Ah. That is good. Well, then, I think we may put aside the monkshood. Warm feet also rules out hemlock, although that must be ingested. If the feet and hands were very hot, we might think belladonna, though that must also travel through the stomach.” Verboom paused for a long moment, his head tilted and his eyes moving as if searching for something invisible. “Alas, Mr. Bacon. I have no other suggestion to offer you.”

  “I have read stories of poisoned cloaks,” Francis said. “Have you heard of such things?”

  “Oh, you’re thinking of Hercules. I am not sure I believe that story. Although one could soak a shirt in a solution of monkshood and cause much pain to the wearer. Death possibly also, but there would be convulsions and vomiting for quite some time. The room would be a mess.” Verboom glanced up at Naja, with her great white fangs. “Perhaps the blade was coated with serpent venom. I have heard they do this in Africa and India.”

  Trumpet’s maidservant had made the same suggestion. Francis was grateful for the confirmation. “Can one obtain serpent venom in London?”

  Verboom flapped his hand. “Oh, you can buy anything in London if you know where to look! I don’t sell such things, nor do I buy them. You won’t find anything so rare and dangerous as that on a shelf, not even behind a counter, except perhaps in those unsavory alchemists’ holes south of the river. It sounds like an assassin’s tool.”

  They traded dark looks. The door opened to admit a well-dressed woman with a maidservant at her side. Verboom called a greeting, then turned back to Francis. “I’m afraid I cannot answer your questions after all, Mr. Bacon.”

  Francis glanced at the women. He hated to leave with nothing. “This idea of serpent venom tickles my memory. Something I’ve read, something to do with discoveries in the New World.”

  “Ah!” Verboom snapped his fingers. “I know the book you mean: De Orbe Novo by Peter Martyr. You’ve read it, Mr. Bacon. We’ve discussed it more than once.”

  “That’s it,” Francis said. “I can see the page in my mind’s eye now, but I can’t quite remember. Something about arrow poisons . . .”

  “I have the book here in my shop. Let me have it fetched for you.” He snapped his fingers to summon an assistant, then went to wait upon the gentlewoman. The assistant soon returned with a heavy folio volume, the original edition of the work in Latin.

  Francis stood at the end of the counter paging through the book. Peter Martyr, though Italian by birth, had become a chronicler for the Spanish court earlier in the century. He gained access to the letters of explorers like Christopher Columbus and Vasco Núñez de Balboa and used them to write detailed accounts of their historic voyages, including marvelous tales about the places to which they traveled and the strange peoples whom they met. Since all explorers kept their eyes open for new spices and medicines, as well as gold and rare jewels, Martyr’s book was full of notes about plants and their uses. Tobacco was mentioned, as were potatoes. Francis hadn’t sampled either substance, though he’d been present when Sir Walter Ralegh had presented them to the queen.

  He raced through the book, running his finger down the pages to help pick out the odd word to help orient him. He found the passage he wanted. “Here it is.” Francis looked up and saw that Verboom had moved off with the women toward the back of the shop. Holding the place with his fingers, he continued to skim through the book, searching for a more detailed description of arrow poisons.

  Voices passed behind him; the door opened and closed. Verboom reappeared behind the counter.

  “I found it,” Francis said. “That is, I found the passage I remembered. It doesn’t say much, only that the savages in a place called Peru hunt with an unusual arrow poison.”

  “That is vague. Does it help you?”

  “No.” Francis closed the heavy volume, laying his hand on the worn leather cover. “But if this book was the murderer’s inspiration, it might indicate a man who reads Latin.” An educated man, in that case; perhaps Tom’s idea was not so far-fetched. Sir Richard Topcliffe read Latin as well as Italian.

  Francis sighed. “I suppose I’ll have to reread this in hopes of finding more details. I’d like to have something more specific before visiting those alchemists’ dens. I’d feel a fool babbling about paralysis drugs from New Spain with no more to go on than this book of fables.”

  Verboom wagged his finger. “Take a friend, Mr. Bacon. Or two.” Then a smile split his round face. “If that fails, perhaps you should ask at the Spanish embassy.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Tom and Ben spent the whole afternoon prowling pawnshops along the waterfront from the Strand to London Bridge. They were footsore and weary and almost ready to give up, although they still wanted to check the shops on the bridge. They’d learned nothing other than that London was overstocked with household oddments. People were pawning whatever they had to buy food and medicines to send to their menfolk on ships or in militias. Many of these men were stranded in Margate now, sick and hungry. The queen’s treasure chests had already been emptied into the sea in the form of shot and powder, and the Privy Council clutched what little remained for fear the Spanish would regroup in Scotland and march down from the north or sail back around Ireland to try again.

  It had been three weeks since the last reliable sighting of the Spanish fleet. Meanwhile, English soldiers and sailors lay starving all along the coast. Even Lord Admiral Howard had pawned the family plate to feed his men.

  Tom and Ben hadn’t expected to find incense burners and chalices laid out on shutters to entice the passersby, but they had hoped to catch a flicker of guilty knowledge in some pawnbroker’s eyes. No joy. Some shopmen fairly pushed them back out the door. “If you’re not here to buy, I can’t help you. I’m all tapped out.”

  Now they stood in a goldsmith’s shop on the bridge, waiting for the clerk to finish whispering across the counter to a woman draped in a gray veil. Tom had been here once or twice, searching for gifts to send home to his sisters. The shop had a specialty in stylish trinkets, catering to women who pawned gifts from one admirer to enjoy the cash until their next suitor redeemed them.

  Tom elbowed Ben and whispered, “See? Trumpet could have helped out. That could be her now, for all we know. Those veils render a woman nearly invisible.”

  The woman raised her veil to examine a piece of jewelry more closely. She was twice Trumpet’s age and nothing like as pretty.

  “Not invisible enough.” Ben shook his finger at Tom. “And I do hope she has sense enough not to try. Lady Surdeval, pawning her husband’s valuables mere days after his death? We’d never see the end of this scandal.”

  “But it’s all right for me, is it? The one accused of doing the actual thieving?”

  “Don’t be obtuse. You’re a nob —” He stopped abruptly, then tried again. “No one knows you, not by sight.”

  You’re a nobody, he’d meant to say. Tom chose not to take offense. It was true enough and not a bad thing under the current circumstances. But one of these days, everyone in London would know the name Clarady. With his wits and his father’s wealth, he couldn’t help but rise.

  Tom spotted a pendant crafted of a band of gold around a disk of jade precisely two shades darker than Trumpet’s eyes. A profile etched into the stone resembled Tom; at least it had a nose, a chin, and a crown of curly hair. He’d have a dimple
carved into the cheek. She could wear it under her partlet. He chuckled to himself; then he could bribe the clerk to tell him when she brought it back to pawn it.

  Ben followed his gaze and scowled. “I hope you’re not thinking of that for Trumpet.”

  “What if I am?”

  “You must avoid all communication with her, Tom. No notes, no gifts.”

  “You’re vastly overstating the situation, camerade. But relax; I’ll save it for later.” Later this evening, when Ben was with Mr. Bacon. He’d send it in a packet marked “Gray’s Inn.” Any nosy servants or messengers would assume it was just another legal document.

  They examined the other items displayed on shelves behind the counter but saw nothing they recognized from the chapel at Surdeval House. The wares included silver bowls and a jeweled cup but nothing with distinctively Catholic decorations. A few large crucifixes but nothing that couldn’t appear in a Protestant family chapel.

  The clerk finished with the lady in the veil and turned toward them with a smile. He lifted the jade pendant from its hook and draped it across his palm for Tom’s closer inspection. “A lovely piece, is it not?”

  Tom curled his lip. “The color’s uneven. And what’s that in the middle? Some sort of bird?”

  They bargained for a minute without reaching a conclusion. The clerk replaced the pendant on its hook and turned to Ben. “Does anything catch your eye, Master?”

  “I’m looking for a little cross for my grandmother. Something in gold, perhaps with a stone or two.” He met the clerk’s eyes. “Perhaps on a string of beads . . .”

  “Certainly not!” The clerk leaned back as if Ben had waved a dead fish under his nose.

  Tom jingled the purse in his pocket. “He’s very fond of his grandmother.”

  The clerk’s eyes slid left, then right. Then he lowered his head and murmured, “We do not keep articles of that kind on the premises. We might, on the very rarest of occasions, for one of our most valued patrons, accept such a thing in pawn, but we would pass it on immediately.” He scratched his neck under the edge of his heavily starched ruff. “The long-term value is difficult to assess, you understand. And possession can be problematic in itself.”

  “Where do you sell them?” Ben asked. “If it’s not too far, we might drop by this evening.”

  The clerk gave Tom a coy look. “One can’t give away all of one’s connections. Where’s the advantage in that?”

  “Perhaps I could have another look at that jade pendant,” Tom said.

  The clerk handed it to him with a smirk. He spoke to Ben in a low voice. “Our less popular items go to a shop in Southwark. I believe they send them out of the country. Cousins in France, one presumes.” He sniffed. “In St. Saviour parish, just past the bridge, under the sign of the thistle. Don’t mention my name.”

  Easily done, since they never learned it.

  They bought mince pies from a vendor at the foot of the bridge and strolled into the warren of small streets and alleys on the right. Shadows spread through narrow passageways as the sun sank behind Winchester Palace.

  They found the sign of the thistle down an alley barely wide enough for a handcart in a row of houses that backed up to the river. The shop, if shop it could be called, seemed designed to repel customers. Oily grime clouded the small panes of the windows, obscuring a dispirited display of moth-eaten draperies and clay jars covered with dusty cobwebs.

  The man behind the counter had a weather-beaten face with a cloth patch over one eye. He wore a knitted cap that fitted smoothly over his skull. His good eye regarded them coldly. “How bist ye, gentlemen? Zummat I can do ye?”

  His accent was thickest Dorset — an old sailor, and from Tom’s native shore. This could be the luck he’d been waiting for.

  “That depends.” Tom looked around the dingy shop with a curled lip. “If you’re in the game I’m playing, you’re not very good at it.”

  “If ye’ve come to ballyrag, ye can turn yerself right around.”

  “Patience, man. I meant no insult.” Tom murmured to Ben, “Let me talk to this churl alone. Might get more from him if he thinks we’re fellow West Countrymen.” Ben’s accent was well-bred Suffolk, and the man had no ability to alter his speech. Besides, Tom wouldn’t know how much of what he learned he wanted to share until he heard it.

  Ben shrugged and turned to browse among the sad assortment of items in the front of the shop. He opened the lid of a barrel in the corner and dropped it again with a small cry of disgust.

  Tom went up and leaned an elbow on the stained wooden counter. “That starched dandiprat at yon goldsmith’s shop up on the bridge said you might be interested in something a bit out of the way.” He took out the Spanish doubloon his father had given him and tapped its edge on the counter.

  The man grunted, keeping his eyes on the gold piece. “I’ve seen such as they afore.”

  Tom flipped the coin under the man’s nose, catching it and closing it in his fist. “This is just a sample of the sort of thing one finds in certain places under certain circumstances. There’s plenty more, someplace safe. Things that got left out of the counting.”

  Everything taken from captured Spanish ships was officially required to be inventoried and delivered to the Lords Lieutenant to be sure the queen got her share, but a sailor with quick hands could pick up a trinket or two during the heat of the affray. They weren’t likely to get any other wages anytime soon, so officers tended to turn a blind eye.

  The man shot Tom a sidelong look. “I don’t know ye or your fine friend. Ye’d best take yer fancy pieces back to yon dandiprat.”

  Tom opened his fist to consider the large gold coin lying on his palm. “Then what should I do with Señor Doubloon and his mates? I’ve also got another curious item the former owner might pay a healthy sum to get back. You know the sort of thing I mean. A box, with bones in it . . .”

  The counterman poked his tongue into his cheek and gave Tom a long, measuring look. Then he leaned closer and said in a low voice, “Talk with the Savoy Solicitor. If he reckons ye’ll do, he’ll send me word. Come back in a day or two and I might have zummat for ye.”

  The Savoy Palace! Tom knew at once that was the right track at last. What better place for a rogue barrister to hide than that ramshackle compound down on the Strand? The Savoy was a liberty — its own legal jurisdiction — which made it a favored residence for persons with a ticklish relationship to the law.

  “I’ll do that.” Tom tucked the doubloon back into his pocket and turned to go. He watched Ben gingerly poke at a large book, then lean well back before flipping the cover open in a cloud of dust. Tom shook his head with wry affection. Naturally, Ben would be compelled to look inside a book, however rat-bitten and mold-encrusted it might be.

  He didn’t like the conflict that was growing between them, but he liked being treated like a newly signed apprentice even less. Until Ben and Mr. Bacon saw fit to include him in their game, he would keep his own cards close to his chest. Besides, Trumpet ought by rights to visit the Savoy with him. The solicitor in question was probably her uncle, after all. If so, she’d get more out of him than Tom could on his own and a far sight more than Bacon or Ben. Welbeck wouldn’t tell Bacon if it was day or night.

  “You certainly talked for a long time. What did you find out?” Ben’s voice held a suspicious note.

  “Nothing,” Tom said, but the lie stabbed at his conscience.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Francis pressed his seal into the puddle of warm wax sealing the folds of a letter to his brother, Anthony, detained in France by the war. This letter was a copy, hastily written but covering the main points. He would send it by a different messenger in case the first one failed to arrive. He ought to send a third, but the message wasn’t that urgent. Come home, your mother misses you, and so do I. He’d written the same words every week for years now.

  He tossed the letter into the basket of correspondence ready to go out and snuffed the candle he’d used to warm
his sealing wax. Two sharp raps sounded and the door swung open before he had time to call out.

  Ben hastened into the chamber, fairly bristling with anxiety. “Francis, we must talk.” His voice was still hoarse from all the shouting he’d done yesterday.

  Thursday, the eighth of September, had been declared a national day of thanksgiving for England’s deliverance from the dread armada. Eleven banners from defeated Spanish ships had been paraded up Fleet Street to St. Paul’s. The men of Gray’s Inn had gone together, wearing their best finery under their legal robes. Francis hadn’t cheered, sparing his throat, but he had shared in the upwelling of gratitude and the simple satisfaction of being English still.

  Francis said, “I was about to come down. Weren’t we going to meet outside the hall at ten? The bell’s only just struck.” They were on their way to the bookseller’s that morning to look for references to poisons from New Spain.

  Ben stood before the desk with his hands on his hips. His agitation and the aggressive pose made him seem taller than usual. “The hour struck fifteen minutes ago, but I decided to come up. You won’t talk while walking, and there’s no place in the city quiet or private enough for this conversation.”

  “You’re beginning to alarm me. What can have happened since breakfast?”

  “Nothing, but I’ve spent the last hour pacing in my chambers, debating whether I should speak or hold my peace. In some ways, it’s none of my affair. On the other hand, if we’re truly working together as we used to, as I thought we were, toward a solution to the problems which strike more nearly —”

  “Ben.” Francis broke into the jumbled flow. “Sit down and compose yourself. What concerns you concerns me.”

  Ben subsided into a chair. “I think Tom’s keeping something from us.”

  “Faith, is that all that’s worrying you?” Francis laughed but cut it short as Ben’s face darkened. “Peace, peace. I have no doubt Tom has some secret he regards as important, doubtless something to do with the night he spent with Trumpet. Those two did something they ought not to have done — that much is clear in their every gesture when they’re together. Whatever it was, trust me, we should be grateful not to be told.”