Three beds of grass and blankets had been made on the floor with no shortage of skill and there were still men within two of them, but those men did not stir. As his two companions checked further afield, poking with sticks and turning any stone that seemed awkwardly set, Louis himself dismounted and approached the first bed, the guard’s head still poking from beneath the blankets. With the light of a fresh-lit torch he could see that the man’s eyes were wide open, his pupils fixed and dilated. Dead. Pulling back the blanket he could see the cause in an instant: a neck-slice - deep and clean. The man had bled out beneath his sheets and, in the cold November night, his body was pale and cold. He had been dead some time.
A check of the second guard’s slumber had revealed pretty much the same sight and method of death. When he had moved over to check Hercule’s bed, however, he found it as empty as it first appeared. He pulled back the blanket with a stick and found nothing; the mark of a coward if ever he had seen one.
His first assessment of the situation was that the sleeping guards had been killed by a cowardly hand and Hercule, as owner of that hand, had then used it to shake the reins of one of the horses and make good his escape. As one of the remaining horses was clearly that of Hercule himself, that meant he had also taken with him a guard’s horse. A horse that actually belonged to his Gaston’s brother, the king. For that alone Hercule would meet a swift end.
He further assessed that Hercule’s trunk, saddlebags and at least one of the guard’s flintlocks had been taken. The saddlebags would undoubtedly contain, amongst other things, the funds for war - funds promised to the king - and so it seemed that the list of treasonable offences was now gathering against his cousin faster than the Spaniards had gathered at Valenciennes.
He took one last disparaging look around, noticing a single coin - a copper jeton - at rest on a flattened stump as though laid there deliberately, and then finally wandered off into the trees from where his own guard had called him. He found the man quite deep in, halfway down a small but steep uneven slope of roots and brambles. A slope upon which, against a wide tree trunk, sat at an awkward pile of grass and broken gorse. Poking from the corner of this mass of twigs and leaves could be seen a small piece of smoothed wood. Even in the flickering orange light it looked about the size, shape and cut - perhaps - as the edge of a trunk.
The guard looked to Louis for further instructions and he, having assessed the scene and seen nothing more of worth to be gleaned, nodded his head upward. “Drag it up so we might open it.”
The guard edged a few feet down the gully whereupon he swept away branches and lifted twigs until the trunk was fully exposed. It was basic in design, perfectly rectangular and made only of smooth planks, unvarnished. The kind of trunk he would expect the disposed to own. As proof, even in the half-light, Louis could see clearly the de Montmorency crest - his own mother’s crest - burnt crudely upon it as though done with a cheap iron.
The guard pulled hard at the rope handle. It did not move. He tried again, nothing.
“It weighs,” he said.
Louis pursed his lips and sighed. “Then we shall open it where it sits. Stand back.”
If any valuables were in that trunk, and it seemed increasingly unlikely that there were, then the last thing Louis wanted was a low-paid guard slipping so much as a livre under his cuff in the shadows. He set off down the hill with the torch held high and immediately stumbled on an exposed root, sliding a few feet and losing his long, curly brown wig in the process. In the darkness and, with one hand still holding the torch, he tried and failed to replace it. In the end he threw the wig to the ground in disgust and continued with his close-cropped head exposed to the cold.
Reaching the trunk, he ushered the guard out of the way and crouched low. The hinges and clasp were cheap black iron and the clasp itself was undone. He also noted that a couple of the planks were cracked. It seemed as though someone - perhaps even Hercule himself - had pushed or rolled the trunk down this hill only to find it wedge against a tree. Unable to shift it, he had then set about covering it with branches in the hope that it would not be found. But find it they did.
He prised open the lid.
Inside was the clear cause of the trunk’s awkward weight: a body. And not just any body, but that of his cousin: Hercule. He was curled foetal with his knees tight against his chin and his arms close. Not only was he dead, he had been dead for some considerable time. In the light of the flame Louis could see that the man’s pale skin had already begun to sallow and was now looking fit to fall from his flesh. He face was an ashen mask of horror, caught in a moment of death. The cause of that death could not be determined accurately but, given the amount of blood he could see around the chest area, he would suspect a single, deep puncture wound to the heart. The blood-sodden shirt, coupled with a lack of excessive blood to be found within the trunk itself, led Louis to surmise that Hercule had died some considerable time before this cheap travel box had become his coffin.
The twists of a thorough investigation began to present themselves more clearly in his mind, whilst throwing up some and worrying oddities. Despite word that Hercule had ridden through Chalons in his finery - and this was undoubtedly he - for Louis had suffered the misfortune of meeting his badly-done-to cousin on many an occasion - his body was instead dressed in work clothes: the clothes one might wear to chop logs or clean the stable of a horse. They were not only filthy but also covered in a fine dust that seemed like sandstone. It set Louis’ mind racing as fast as the horses that had brought them here.
So there had been a robber, he mused - a bandit. He had killed the guards and made away with any valuables, along with one fine horse and a weapon. That man was not Hercule and, unfathomably, Hercule himself had been dead far longer than the guards. Which meant that it might actually have been this unknown man who had ridden through Chalons, dressed to look like his cousin. Of course, the guards would not have known what Hercule might have looked like anyway. He could have been an impostor from their very first meeting. This scenario displeased Louis because, whilst the circumstances of needing to catch and deal with a man would have varied little whether that man was Hercule or another, the chances of catching him now fell dramatically. This man was a man unknown to them, and clearly he also had an excellent head start.
He could be anywhere by now.
Indeed, he could be anyone.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Friday, November 25, 1644.
Manningtree, Essex, England.
One man had not worked so much as a single day in all the time he had been resident in Manningtree and yet still he managed a home of not two rooms, nor three... but four. He had clearly not made ‘a fortune’ in the course of his early life, wherever that life might have been lived, and could not afford the luxuries of the manor, but he had done far better than most. His home was single storey and built of stone, like many others in the village, but had glass - albeit milky, semi-opaque glass - in all of its tiny windows. Moreover, unlike the others, its roof did not leak throughout those frequent nights when heavy rain could be heard battering the weathered slates for all it was worth before pouring like an emptied trough onto the earth below.
Along his many travels, few of which he discussed in detail, this man had managed to amass a huge of array of ornamental pieces and curios. Some in the village recalled his arrival here; three carts laden and many more due in the weeks that followed. Whether or not he had ever in fact visited the Oriental or Persian lands was unclear, but during his travels he had certainly collected a wealth of fabrics, rugs and boxes that suggested as much. Perhaps he had been a trader himself, who knew? Perhaps his quiet but firm negotiating skills had proved a boon when haggling out a cheeky barter for a fair day’s work in his younger years.
Either way, if his modest home had the air of a cave in which one might horde treasure, then the room he called his ‘studye’ was undoubtedly the ‘trove’. Wooden floor to low-beamed ceiling was packed to the gills with an array of antiq
uities, all long-gathering dust. Rough carved masks sat atop ornately crafted boxes and still-rolled fabrics filled any gaps they dare leave between. Wood of all colours, semi-precious metal trinkets and bright carvings of elephant tooth all fought an increasingly vain battle to occupy any remaining space.
The centre of this chaotic sea harboured an island almost as ‘fancye’ as that of the Lawford Master himself. A dark, hand-carved hulk of a wooden desk that had arrived in three pieces, the green leather surface now undulating to mountains of hastily written notes. Somewhere in one of the valleys lay an inkwell and quill, though there was probably only Endymion Porter himself who might know its exact location. Behind the desk was an armed chair of matching wood and leather. It was, to all who saw it, the chair of a man who knew his business and, in that chair right now, sat the man himself, his ornate walking stick replete with a brass lion’s-head handle leaning neatly beside him. He worked quietly, musing the world around him whilst carefully filing away at the internal workings of an ornate matchlock pistol. The bulk of the gun occupied the only free space available on the desk, each part neatly separated.
All four of Porter’s rooms were separated by doors, a luxury indeed for these were proper doors of shaped wood as opposed to the hastily nailed offcuts attached to salvaged hinges afforded by many. It was on the door to this study, at around 4:07pm on Friday 17th March 1645, that Porter finally got the deep, resonating knock he had long been expecting...
“Come,” he said, his attentions still focused on the pistol.
The door creaked open and in the doorway stood the prettiest girl in all the village. She wore her finest red dress, clearly desiring to impress, and her long blonde hair was freshly brushed and fell in waves as beautiful as any gentle sea might cast as it fell across her slender shoulders. Her smile was wide and, to the untrained eye, her entire visage and demeanour seemed genuinely friendly and welcoming.
Porter knew better.
“Prudence,” he said without emotion, still not looking away from the gun. “I did wonder how long it would take before you arrived at my door.”
Prudence hurried forward and almost threw herself onto a much more basic chair which faced the desk. “I did not know you wished to see me..?” she offered. She looked excited, yet naively puzzled.
Porter smiled to himself. “I didn’t Prudence. Truly I didn’t. What I am saying is, I was expecting you nevertheless.”
“Never the...”
“Never...” he sighed. “...mind.” He looked up, though just for an instant, before returning to the gentle filing. “So, can I be afforded the opportunity to hazard a guess as to why you might be here...?”
“’Tis the witch... Rachael,” Prudence blurted. “She need be stopped.”
Porter sighed again, deeper this time. “Clearly I cannot.”
“Cannot what..?”
“Be afforded the...” he closed his eyes for a moment. “No matter. This... Rachael girl? She vexes you, yes..?”
“She did kill my Will.”
He desperately wanted to say that Prudence had killed her own Will: both the infant and her own human spirit, but this game was only worth the playing if the competitor had a grasp of the rules and Prudence, clearly a few blades short of a working plow, did not. He sighed, craving the intelligent banter this village seemed resolutely intent on denying him.
“And you can prove this...?”
“No, I can’t,” Prudence said, still rushing her words, “but I feels it... I knows it.. and...”
“...and you know of a man who can.” Porter concluded.
His eyes looked up and saw Prudence staring open mouth back to him. He smiled gently.
“You wore your best dress for me today, Prudence. I have noted that you do that for men only when you are seeking to gain favours..?” She tried to interrupt but he raised his hand and she sank again, obedient. Temporarily, no doubt. “And, as you needed to wear it today, you have been given no time to clean it since yesterday when you were away from the village nigh-on the whole day..? Which is why there is still a trace of reddened clay around the hem.” Prudence looked and saw that it was true. “The kind of reddened clay one might only find in the lands surrounding, say... Thorpe, perhaps? Now, if information offered to me is correct, Masters Hopkins and Stearne did berth at an inn in Thorpe just last night. Would that be a coincidence..?”
“Cowin...?”
He sighed again, deeper this time. When he spoke, he spoke very clearly, as though addressing a child. “Did you travel to Thorpe yesterday and did you meet with Hopkins and Stearne?”
Prudence nodded. “Yes, I...”
“And did you ask them to come and check out whether or not our Rachael is a witch..?”
“She is not our Rachael..?” Prudence sneered. Porter glanced at her firmly and she soon retracted. “Yes, I did. And they says they would.”
“And so now you have something to show me..?” Prudence look puzzled yet again and he was fast tiring of the need to explain his every word. His teeth were ready to clench. “Prudence, if they were doing it for free because they found you so pretty in your dress you would not be wearing that same dress again today and sitting before me now, would you...? So.. the proposal of expenses... hand it over.”
He held out his hand as Prudence reached into her dress excitedly and removed the page. Placing the serpentine action of the matchlock back on the desk, Porter accepted it before leaning backward and musing quietly over its contents. It was over a minute before he spoke again, Prudence fidgeting all the while as though she might wet her underskirts at any moment.
He read calmly. “Two pounds for a full pricking and three-night watch.”
“’Tis nothing...” Prudence exclaimed. “...not to rid us of a witch.” She spat the word again.
“A suspected witch,” Porter corrected. “What you forget, young lady, is that the reason Thorpe is so enamoured of Hopkins, and offer him free berth, is that they did have the benefit of his no-doubt sizeable wisdom regarding Margaret Moone just last spring and they too paid just two pounds...”
“The Ruddy Woman!!” She nodded with almost vicious excitement.
“Indeed... the Ruddy Woman.”
Widow Moone of Thorpe-le-Soken, had indeed been identified as a witch by Matthew Hopkins. However, Porter understood a little more of what might actually have transpired just over a year past. Rising prices for all daily goods were hitting buyers hard, whilst sellers were in clover, and Widow Moone had probably been little more than a victim of greed. She had been evicted from her cottage when a man named Rawblood had offered the landlord an extra ten shillings a year in rent. Avarice, it seems, beat neighbourly custom every time. Even here. On that occasion, however, Widow Moone had hit back, or so it had been claimed. The Easter after she was evicted, Goodwife Rawblood, ‘a very tydy and cleanly woman’, was chatting to one of her neighbours whilst waiting to enter church, when she was engulfed by an army of lice. It was claimed that they were so dense ‘they might have been swept full off her cloaths with a stick’. The evicting landlord’s brother, Richard Caley, had also been present at this abomination, and swore that these long, thin creatures which swarmed her formed ‘no part of God’s creation’. Suspicion immediately fell firm on the shoulders of the still-bitter and oft-vocal Margaret Moone.
Word was sent to Matthew Hopkins and, within a month, the pricking had begun.
“However, on that occasion, Prudence,” Porter continued calmly, “you will recall that Hopkins did ascertain not only that Margaret Moone was a witch, and condemn her as one, but also that six others about which the town had dubious misgivings were also found to be guilty. That...” he curled his lip, “...led to further expenses beyond his own. £1 for the gaoler I gather, fifteen shillings and sixpence for the guards, £15 for Mrs. Howldine to fodder them all. A carpenter was, I understand, paid £1 for erecting the gallows, a roper eight shillings for 7 halters and for making his nogts and the executioner himself received a total of eleven
shillings.” He leaned ever so slightly forward, his eyes firm. “For kicking away a ladder!” He shook his head, indicative that had he been in any business at all, then clearly he would have been able to say that he was in the wrong one. “In total I believe the cost to the village was somewhere approaching £40. That... Prudence... would be about one quarter of this village’s entire budget for the year, with the year barely started. And all without the Master’s approval in advance..?”
“He would not allow it...”
“Indeed he would not.”
“But Master Hopkins’ fees... they is only if he finds her as a witch. He did say so.”
Porter smiled. One more blade on the plow than he had perhaps credited her with. “Indeed. Yet the marks you spoke of, the ones whose nature has so thrown the village into dark talk and which has ensured that the Master himself now forbids young Rachael to leave the manor once more... they will prove her as a witch, if such marks exist... will they not?”
Prudence nodded vehemently. “They will.”
“Then you are, in truth, asking me to authorise a lot of money.”
Prudence’s tone turned instantly toward the one for which she had gained more fame: “I am asking that you rid your village of a witch!” She looked decidedly petulant now.
Porter placed his index fingers together and slowly raised them to his mouth, locking his hands behind them. For a few moments he just sat back and thought. Dark, heavy thoughts that placed a yoke laden with worry firm across his shoulders.
This was it, he mused. The moment which had been building since that dark night in the clearing, talk of which had filled the village since. The moment he had long known would come knocking at his door, and he was well aware that it was always going to be Prudence’s unfair hand that would be doing the knocking. To offer her the funds would undoubtedly be to condemn young Rachael to death, of that there could be little doubt. But to not offer them... well, the consequences could be equally dire. The village would surely rise up in anger against him, for each and every one had now been coloured by Prudence’s dark hues. He would be vilified in an instant and his life here might well be over. Everything would change.
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