Searcher of the Dead

by Nancy Herriman

  “Has the coroner made his ruling?” asked Mistress Stamford. Her actions had brought them the attention of everyone nearby. A goodwife exiting the neighboring poulterer’s, a plucked chicken in her hand, stopped to openly gawk.

  So it was fresh gossip Mistress Stamford sought. “Not as yet. And I would be with my sister when she receives the news. So if you permit—”

  “Arthur will want Mistress Crofton to know he wishes her God’s peace in this painful time.”

  Not gossip, then. A desire to assuage Stamford guilt. Arthur Stamford no more wished a Crofton well than he wished to have a plague of moths eat through his stock of worsteds. In recent months he had feuded with Fulke, though the details of their quarrel were unknown to Bess.

  “Your husband may tell her so, when next he sees her,” Bess responded. “Should propriety allow him to say as much to Dorothie. I fear others will not be so kind.”

  Mistress Stamford pressed her lips together into a thin pink line. “No one blames her.”

  “For what? Forgive me if I do not follow, Mistress Stamford. For what would any blame my sister?”

  Amice Stamford abruptly retreated to the security of the shop’s doorway. “I will pray for God’s mercy upon your family, Mistress Ellyott.”

  “And I will pray that it is proved my family is in no more need of God’s mercy than any other. Good day to you.”

  Bess jabbed her heels into the palfrey’s flanks and urged the horse to trot across the square, his hooves clattering against the cobbles.

  * * *

  “What say you, one and all?” The coroner tilted his head to scan the assembled men.

  A better sort had been chosen, their hair and beards trimmed, their breeches and jerkins in good repair. Kit recognized most of them, familiar faces on the lanes around town. They had dutifully attended to the coroner’s facts as he presented them—the lack of a weapon or other wounds besides the mark around Master Crofton’s throat, the absence of any sign of a struggle, the extreme difficulty of getting a victim to willingly put his neck in a noose to be hoisted to hang. The jurors indulged the coroner and his crude jest with a smattering of uncomfortable laughter. So far as Kit knew, though, they were good and honest men. But to expect them to be able to correctly determine how a man had died … He may as well expect them to discourse in Latin upon the movement of the heavens.

  “Gibb,” he said, as he and his cousin waited for the inevitable, “have you heard rumors of a vagrant in the area?”

  Gibb, the rabbits they’d snared still strung from his belt, looked over at him. “The other day I was told about some stranger seen near the mill. I presumed the fellow had confused the stranger for one of the soldiers returning from the war.”

  “If this stranger has a right to passage, he need not lurk,” Kit pointed out, as he had also explained to the husbandman missing a pig. “See what else you can learn. If anyone else has seen such a person.”

  “But ’tis just past Michaelmas.” His frown shifted the faint scar that cut across his upper lip. A scar Kit had given him with the edge of a hornbook when they were both rough boys at petty school. Those Harwoodes. Kit could still hear the scorn in their schoolmaster’s voice. “My father requires my help with this quarter’s accounts.”

  “See what you can learn between adding and subtracting, then.”

  The jurors finished their deliberation, and silence fell over the gathering of men.

  “Felo-de-se,” the loudest among the coroner’s jury proclaimed. Kit did not like that he seemed to relish the pronouncement. “Self-murder.”

  “Aye!” one among the assembled shouted.

  “Aye!” another joined him.

  Aye. A single word strong enough to fell Dorothie Crofton’s future. And the outcome Kit had expected.

  The coroner’s gaze passed over the men again. “And no cause to believe he was non compos mentis?” Of unsound mind.

  “Besides his vile temper?” a bold fellow asked, drawing more chuckles. “Nay.”

  “Constable Harwoode, you hear the jury’s decision,” boomed the coroner. His voice always had been thunderous. He’d missed his calling in the church.

  “I do,” Kit responded, dropping his hand to the hilt of his dagger, its sheath tucked into his belt. Gibb muttered under his breath.

  The coroner inclined his head. “Then, this even, his body shall be taken to the nearest crossroads under the cover of darkness, where it will be buried with a stake through the chest so that he may not haunt the good citizens of our town. And let all who pass think on their own sinfulness.”

  Aye, he’d missed his calling.

  “The crossroads?” Gibb searched the faces of the jurors, looking for sympathizers and finding none. “Have pity!”

  Kit grabbed his arm and dragged him backward, silencing him. “The coroner follows the law. You know that as well as I.”

  “We should speak to Wat,” he grumbled. “He could see it undone.”

  Their cousin, the lord of the manor. He may be able to overrule the coroner’s decision to have Crofton buried at the crossroads, but would he?

  The coroner selected a handful of men to inter Fulke Crofton that evening after the sun had set. From among their number, he chose one to stand guard over the body in the meantime.

  “More property for Wat, however,” said Gibb, watching the rest of the jurors disperse along the road back to town. The coroner, rather than following the men, turned south. Toward Wat’s manor, perhaps.

  “Our cousin does not need the goods of a dead man.” Though, as the holder of a royal patent that gave him the right, Fulke Crofton’s movable property was now Sir Walter Howe’s. “He has more than enough.”

  “Wat never has enough!”

  True. Much would have more.

  “I have another task for you, Gibb.” Kit looked toward the body. Someone had covered Crofton’s face with his sodden cloak, its brilliant green a slash of color in the shadows. “I need you to go to Master Marshall’s house and inform Mistress Crofton of the coroner’s ruling. But I warn you, she will be distressed. She appears to think her husband did not die by his own hand and will not welcome this finding.”

  “I have to tell her?” Frowning, Gibb tossed the end of his short cloak over his opposite shoulder. “There are times I wish you’d not convinced me to help you with this work of yours, coz.”

  “Go to. You’ve told me often how working on your father’s accounts bores you.”

  “I might not mind the boredom, given what has happened here today.” He gestured at the rabbits strung from his belt. “Shall I go with these jangling about my hips?”

  “I will take them to Wat,” said Kit. Gibb handed over the rabbits. “I hope I can also convince him to allow Mistress Crofton a week among her goods. She’s become a widow in a humiliating fashion; she does not need the additional pain of having her belongings hastily snatched away.”

  “And will you try to convince Wat to have Master Crofton more respectably interred? The crossroads. With a stake!” Gibb shuddered.

  “Aye, Gibb.” Kit exhaled as he wrapped the strings holding the rabbits around his fist. “I shall see what I can do.”

  CHAPTER 4

  “The coroner’s jury will call it suicide, Bess,” Robert whispered.

  There was no need for whispers; Dorothie was fast asleep in the chamber above the hall, her daughter at her side. Margery had returned to town but an hour earlier to the news of Fulke’s death. Upon her arrival at Robert’s house, she had gone straight to Dorothie.

  “The Crown will even take the property her first husband left to her,” he added. “Barbarous.”

  He stood in the doorway to Bess’s still room, where she prepared her physic. Her precious dried herbs and spices, stored in sealed stone pots, were lined up in tidy rows on wooden shelves. A round brick furnace occupied one corner, and upon the table at its side stood her supply of conical copper alembics for condensing the waters that would be boiled off. Her many vessels i
n which to collect the liquids also waited there. Drying flowers hung from the rafters overhead, adding their scent—sweet, spicy, earthy—to the air. The still room was more than the place where Bess prepared her physic; it was her refuge.

  “They will not remove her plate. Fulke dowered that to her.” Bess brought over a stool to where dried lavender dangled in bunches. “The law cannot take it.”

  “Small comfort.” Robert rubbed the back of his neck. “Her boys will have to be fetched back from Cambridge to live in that empty house with her and Margery. And her plate.”

  His words sank like weights in Bess’s uneasy stomach. Joan had tried to feed them when they had returned with Dorothie, but all Bess had been able to manage was a bite of cold mutton pie. It sat like a stone alongside Robert’s words.

  More than his words and Joan’s mutton pie pained her stomach though. Something was amiss about Fulke, more than the incredible manner in which he had died. But she could not recall what it was.

  Bess bent to pin her petticoats out of the way. “And what shall happen to us, Robert?”

  “None will condemn us for Fulke’s death,” he replied.

  “Believe you that? In truth?” Grabbing up her scissors, she stepped onto the stool and snipped at the twine suspending the lavender. Robert fetched the broad wicker basket from her bench and brought it over. “Amice Stamford stopped me when I rode through town. She wished me to believe the same as well.”

  “Stamford’s wife wished to comfort you?” he asked, scoffing.

  Bess laid the lavender into the basket. “She must be feeling guilty. Nonetheless, you know many of the townsfolk will condemn us, Robin,” she said, using her pet name for him. “They will believe Fulke’s sin reflects on us all. A stain upon the reputation of our family.”

  “Come now. You’re near as bad as Dorothie to fret over gossips.”

  “But gossip can scar and burn far more than truth.” More lavender went into the basket. Though she worked to keep her thoughts from wandering in directions she did not wish, one thought would not obey. “Arthur Stamford would not have harmed Fulke, would he?”

  “What mean you by such a question? Fulke took his own life.”

  “But why? What reason had he?”

  “Dorothie told me not the other day that some of the clothiers in the area are balking at buying Fulke’s wool, thinking it of lesser quality,” said Robert. “She believes Stamford the source of their misgiving. Fulke was concerned the rumors might damage his business and was distressed.”

  “So you have confirmed my suspicion,” said Bess. “Arthur Stamford did wish to harm Fulke.”

  “Stamford is a petty man, but slander is the extent of his criminality, Bess,” he said. “Cease thinking he meant worse for our brother-in-law. Such thoughts will give you unease.”

  “Too late, Robin.”

  He took her elbow to help her as she stepped down to the flag flooring in order to move the stool. “And we will aid Dorothie. Should she ask,” Robert added. “She and her children could live here. There is enough room.”

  “I thought you planned to wed again, and soon,” said Bess, climbing back onto the stool to cut down the remainder of the lavender. “The addition of a bride would result in far too many women in this household to please any of us, should Dorothie and Margery also move here. Besides, Dorothie will not wish to share a roof with me again.”

  Robert’s face set into hard lines. At that moment, he looked so much like their father that Bess’s heart contracted. So many people to miss and to mourn. Their parents. Martin. Robert’s wife, gone to her reward in Heaven not long before Martin died. Bess’s two sweet children, buried in a cold London churchyard. She would dream of the girls tonight, kiss their soft cheeks once more, the joy of reunion as ever turned to bittersweet sorrow upon the morn.

  And now Fulke—pompous, sanctimonious, ill-tempered, yet unexpectedly witty Fulke—to add to their number.

  “You and Dorothie should love each other better,” her brother chided.

  “I would, if she would let me.” The crack in their relationship was too old to mend.

  “Perhaps after this she will. We must be prepared for the coroner’s ruling,” he said. “We are the strong ones, Bess, you and I. We must be strong now.”

  The last of the lavender collected, she returned the stool to its proper place and unpinned her petticoats. Joan would set the dried flower bunches among their linens and place them under pillows to help give restful sleep. Sleep they all needed.

  “It is not strength to concede that Fulke killed himself.” Bess strode from the still room through the lobby connecting it to the rest of the service rooms. She turned into the hall, where Quail lounged in a spray of sunshine streaming through the room’s many windowpanes of leaded glass.

  “Bess, he was a man of strong and unruly passions.”

  “And none that would lead him to this. Not even some concern over his business. He would not. He was too proud,” she said, repeating what she’d told the constable. Who had appeared no more convinced than her brother did at that moment.

  “Hush now, Bess. Your distress is causing you to have fancies. We must accept—”

  “If the coroner rules felo-de-se, I shall not accept such a conclusion. Not when the result is the ruin of Dorothie and her children!”

  He shut the door behind him. “There is no need to shout. Dorothie and Margery will hear.”

  “I am not shouting!” she insisted, her voice echoing off the decorated plaster walls and wainscot. Quail awakened with a yelp. The dog got to his feet and plodded off. “So I am. I am sorry. But Fulke had enemies. You know he did. Even Dorothie said as much this morning. ‘They hated him.’ Who, Robert? Who?”

  “She imagines slights where there are none,” he said. “And Mistress Langham has forgiven Fulke.”

  Another enemy, which made at least two.

  “I would I could be as certain as you that she has forgiven Fulke for what he did. Her husband died in Fleet Prison.”

  Master Langham had perished from a fever, though his family had paid for a cell in the best part of the prison and for food and a bed. He had languished in the Fleet because Fulke had informed the authorities that he believed the Langhams hid Jesuit priests in their rambling house. The queen’s men, looking to crush every last Catholic who might assist in plots to end the reign of a Protestant monarch, had been quick to investigate. They had found a hidden chamber. Its emptiness had not saved Master Langham from his fate.

  “She is a good woman, despite what they claim about her and her family.” A muscle twitched in Robert’s jaw. Discussion of Mistress Langham discomfited his conscience. And Bess’s as well. “I would not see her accused in your desire to preserve Dorothie’s fortune.”

  “I do not attempt to accuse her. I merely attempt to point out that Fulke had enemies.”

  “Bess, rule your thoughts.” He took her hands in his. They were warm and strong, as strong as he was. “And promise me that you will submit to the coroner’s judgment. If you do not, I shall not leave for London on the morrow but will remain here to govern you.”

  “But you must go,” she said. “Your business requires your presence in the city. And your potential bride awaits your arrival as well. She might think you have changed your mind about asking her to wed.”

  “Then promise me.”

  Slowly, she inclined her head. She did not, however, speak the words aloud.

  “Be steadfast for the both of us in my absence, Bess. Your sister will need you.”

  “Dorothie has never needed me.”

  “That is not so. She is merely too proud to admit as much.”

  Fingers tapped upon the hall door, and Joan entered when bid.

  She offered a curtsy. “The constable’s man is at the door, requesting an audience, Master Marshall.”

  Robert released Bess’s hands. The news had come. “Send him in, Joan.”

  * * *

  “Kit! What brings you here?” Hi
s cousin Sir Walter Howe strode across the paneled hall, his boot heels rapping against the tile floor. The spangles decorating his rose-red jerkin and trunk hose reflected the light streaming through the diamond-shaped panes of window glass. “You should have told me of your visit. We could have shared dinner.”

  Kit stood in the opening of the screens passage, which spanned the gap between the kitchen and the hall and led to the front entrance. “I left the rabbits we captured with your kitchen maid. However, I cannot stay for dinner.”

  Wat—taller than Kit by a head and two hands wider—clapped him on the shoulder. He had a broad face and big features to go with his height and breadth; he looked nothing like a Harwoode. Of which he was proud.

  “You can always stay for dinner. I shall tell Cecily you are here. She would wish to see you.”

  “Do not disturb your wife.” A frail young woman, she was heavy with child. Her fourth attempt to bear Wat an heir. “Truly, I do not plan to stay long. I do, though, wish to discuss a matter with you.”

  “So you can spare a moment.”

  He grabbed Kit’s upper arm and pulled him into the hall. The size and the opulence of the room was meant to dwarf those who passed beneath the plaster ceiling covered in geometric moldings. Rich tapestries hung above the linen-fold paneling. Armor and weaponry were displayed upon the far wall. A massive table covered with a Turkey carpet managed to look dwarfed as well. Wat, however, was undaunted by the magnificence he’d inherited. In fact, he seemed to swell in confidence to fill the expanse.

  “Come and sit and tell me about this matter of yours.”

  Kit accepted a seat before the immense carved fireplace while Wat took the matching chair set at an angle to him. Though it was yet morning, a fire burned upon the hearth, beating back the October chill.

  “It concerns Fulke Crofton,” said Kit. “The coroner has made his ruling.”

  Wat nodded. “Felo-de-se. I heard.”

  The coroner had run here in order to deliver the news. “The Croftons will be ruined. Allow Mistress Crofton at least a week with her grief before taking all her goods, Wat.”