by Anna Castle
“What do you want me to do?”
“What you do, you and Mr. Bacon. You investigate these things. Strange deaths. You admitted it yourself.” Stephen grabbed Tom by the shoulders. “Don’t you see? They’ll blame me. I just got married! They’ll say I murdered Anne to keep my wife from finding out about her. And she’s in my bed. I don’t know what to do.”
Tom stared at his one-time friend, rubbing his chin with his fingers. A portion of his mind snagged on the thought that he should’ve gotten a clean shave yesterday, in consideration of a lady’s tender skin. But only a portion and only for a moment. Poor Stephen! And poor Lady Anne!
He gripped Stephen’s shoulder. “Courage, Steenie. You’re right; Mr. Bacon will sort it out. Give me a minute to get dressed.” Tom cocked his head toward his chamber. “Wait outside, will you? The lady doesn’t need to know about this.”
“The fewer, the better.” Stephen walked back down the stairs.
Tom waited until he was out of sight before slipping back into his room. He kept his voice down, on the odd chance Stephen had come back up. “Did you hear any of that?”
“Just that Anne Courtenay is dead. What happened?”
“Poison, sounds like. I don’t know.” Tom pressed his palms into his temples. This was not how they’d expected this morning to start. “All right. I’ll go back with him. What will you do?”
“I’ve got to get inside those rooms before you do. Can you fetch Mr. Bacon first?”
“I guess I’ll have to.” Tom glanced out the window. The misty darkness was fading into dim daylight. “He won’t like it.”
“All the better. It’ll take longer to roust him.”
“True.”
“What happened to Catalina?” Trumpet stood next to the window, snugged against the wall where she couldn’t be seen, peering into the early mist. She somehow managed to maintain that ineffable air of command, even with her black hair matted and blown as if she’d spent the night steering into the teeth of a hurricane.
“She’s probably right around the corner, waiting for Stephen to go away.”
They agreed that Tom would leave first and lead Stephen straight to Bacon’s chamber, taking as long as possible to rouse him without seeming to dawdle. Meanwhile, Trumpet would slip out and creep in her hooded cloak back to her bridal chamber. If she didn’t meet Catalina on the way, she would surely find her inside. She’d swap clothes with Jane Switt while Catalina traded the piggy sheet for the real one. Then Trumpet would burrow into the bed and pretend to be asleep, resisting the urge to eavesdrop on the discussion in Stephen’s room.
They embraced one another tightly, but not lustily, in confirmation of their unbreakable bond. They’d crossed a bridge together last night. They were one now, never to be parted, except temporarily and then only on the surface. Their souls were forever intertwined.
Tom kissed her lightly on the lips and left.
He found Stephen pacing in the street, watched by Lancelot and Guinevere, who had come out of their den to see what was going on. They crooned eagerly when they saw Tom, so he reached between the bars of their pen to pet them.
“Leave the cursed dogs, will you?” Stephen said. “Let’s go.”
“We don’t want them to start barking. Try not to worry too much. Mr. Bacon will know what to do.”
“He won’t like being woken.”
“There’s no help for it. We can’t wait until everyone in the palace is up and doing, can we?”
Stephen shook his head. The poor man looked distraught. Tom could only imagine the hell he’d been through before he came running to the kennels for help.
They strode past the stables and on through the yard surrounding the huge kitchen. Some people were already at work, getting fires lit and water boiling to supply the needs of a few hundred pampered gentlefolk. No one gave them any notice. Young gentlemen frequently stayed out until dawn. They crossed the Great Court and went up the stair to Bacon’s small room on the top floor.
Enough light entered the window on the landing to distinguish door from wall, but not to reveal the huddled lump of blankets lying on the floor. Tom stumbled into them unwitting.
“Hoi!” Simon Pinnock’s voice rose from the mass. “Let a man sleep, won’t you?”
“Wake up, Pinnock. It’s Tom, with Lord Dorchester. We need Mr. Bacon to come with us, quickly.”
Pinnock barked a laugh, then clambered to his feet, wrapping his covers around him like a jug-eared Roman senator. “He’s still sleeping.”
“Then I’ll wake him.” Tom and Pinnock had squared off many times on the issue of who decided when Tom was allowed into Bacon’s chambers. If it was something that Bacon really wanted or needed to do, but he was being slothful after staying up too late reading or playing with his experiments, Tom usually won. Then again, sometimes he didn’t. “Why are you sleeping out here?”
“He brought a friend home last night.”
Stephen snorted. “Mr. Bacon? Hiding a woman in his room?”
Tom and Pinnock traded looks, not bothering to correct that assumption. “This won’t be easy,” Tom warned Stephen. “He won’t want to get involved. It would help to offer him some sort of gratuity.”
“Anything! If he can get me out of this —” Stephen looked at the rings on his hands, twisting the newest one — his wedding ring — before catching himself. Then he removed a different one from his little finger. “Anne gave me this. It’s got a ruby, a cabochon. He can have this.”
“What do I get?” Pinnock asked.
“A box on the ears if you don’t stand aside,” Tom said. “Come on. You know he’ll want this. I’m going in.” He pressed Pinnock aside. “Don’t worry, I won’t even notice the friend, whoever it is.” To Stephen he added, “Best you wait out here, my lord. If we embarrass him, it’ll just take longer.”
“All right, but hurry. We have to move Anne somewhere else, and it’s getting lighter by the minute.”
Tom rapped on the door and opened it without waiting for a response. “Mr. Bacon? It’s Tom. You’ve got to get up. There’s another crisis at hand.”
Groggy sounds emerged from behind the bed curtains, followed by muffled whispers, followed by Bacon’s terse command, “Go away.”
“No, sir.” Tom approached the side of the bed whence the voice had come and twitched the curtain back enough to let in the gray light. He found Bacon glaring at him and another man ducking beneath the sheets. Not quite fast enough — Tom recognized Michel Joubert, the secretary to the French ambassador. Trumpet had seated them together at the wedding supper, where they had seemed to be enjoying one another’s company.
Which had nothing to do with the present emergency. “It’s Stephen — Lord Dorchester.”
“Stephen’s been killed?” Bacon threw off his covers and swung his bare legs over the edge of the bed. He ran a hand through his tousled brown locks, blinking at the weak light. “Did Lady —” He glanced behind him at his friend, covered from head to toe but still presumably able to hear every word.
“It isn’t Stephen,” Tom said, “but he’s involved. He needs our help. He’ll pay you.”
“God’s mercy,” Bacon muttered and got up, closing the curtains. “Where are my clothes?” Then he looked directly at Tom for the first time. “How much?”
“A ruby ring.” Tom gave it to him.
He waited while Bacon made use of the chamber pot, then helped him sort his clothes from the secretary’s. Bacon went around to the other side of his bed and poked his head inside the curtains. “Ne m’attends pas, mon ami.” The secretary mumbled something in French.
Then Tom and Bacon went out to meet Stephen, who was standing at the window staring across the vast yard toward his own chambers. Tom cursed himself for leaving him with that view, but no harm seemed to have been done. Only one window showed a yellow glimmer in the long row of houses. “Did you leave candles lit in your room?”
“I must have,” Stephen said. “I hope my wife is still
asleep.”
Trumpet must be in by now, with her part of the stage set. Pinnock had gone, leaving his blankets in a heap, probably to visit the communal office of easement beyond the kitchen yard.
“I’m sorry to wake you so early, Mr. Bacon.” Stephen glanced uncertainly at Tom. “Did you tell him?”
Tom shook his head. “We can’t talk here. Let’s just go.”
They walked in silence to Stephen’s rooms. He held his breath as he opened the door to the anteroom, but all within was still. Stephen shot a wary look at Trumpet’s door, then held a finger to his lips as he led them through into his bedchamber.
What they found within was as sorrowful a sight as Tom had ever seen, and he’d once discovered his own tutor hanging from a roof beam. A young woman lay naked in a spatter of vomit on the richly appointed bed, her once-beautiful face contorted in frozen agony. Her death had not been quiet, and it had not been quick.
Tom forced himself to walk close enough to notice the waxiness of her cold skin and to smell the sour tang of spewed wine. The stains on the rumpled sheets were red, but like wine, not blood. Her body was curled as if her belly had contracted, her slack arms still curved protectively inward. He forced himself to look at her face. Her eyes were open, the pupils huge, as if staring into the darkness beyond the veil of life.
Tom looked away to steel himself, then turned back to gently close the vacant eyes. Then he walked away from the bed. Bacon had moved toward the shuttered windows, where he stood at an angle to the bed, obliquely watching the brief examination.
Tom shrugged at him. “She was obviously poisoned. What I mean is, she wasn’t stabbed or shot or strangled or dropped from a great height.”
“Feh.” Bacon frowned at him. “This is no time for levity.”
“I wasn’t joking.” He was trying to ground himself in the practical. He’d seen corpses before, but none so piteously young. “I can’t tell you any more than that because I don’t know anything about poisons.”
Bacon accepted that with a grunt. He asked Stephen, “Can we cover her, my lord? A sheet? A cloak?”
“Yes. Thank God.” Stephen found a lady’s cloak, dark green velvet, and shook it over Anne’s body. “I thought you would want to see her.”
“And now we have.” Bacon turned his head to one wall and scanned the large chamber, his gaze moving from the plastered ceiling to the rush-matted floor. His inspection stopped at a table beside the door where a silver goblet stood next to a figured pitcher and a small glass phial. Another goblet lay on the floor near the bed.
Bacon’s eyes lingered on that phial. It seemed to cost him something to summon up his next words. “What was in that phial?”
“A love potion,” Stephen said, “or that’s what Anne told me. She offered it to me, but I didn’t want it. Then later she said, ‘Let’s see how it works,’ or something like that. She poured it into a cup of wine and drank it.” His eyes pleaded for forgiveness. “She was feeling playful. We both were; we’d been playing, hadn’t we? I didn’t try to stop her.”
“Why would you?” Tom said. “This isn’t your fault, Stephen.”
“It feels like my fault,” he whispered.
“I do not believe it is, my lord.” Bacon spoke in the tart voice that banished nonsense. “Now we must find out whose fault it is. Where did the phial come from?”
“I don’t know. Someone brought it to the wedding supper. They were passing it around, laughing. Then Anne handed it to me, saying, ‘Give this to your bride, my lord. It will rouse her wanton spirit and make her lust for you tonight.’” His mouth twisted. “I don’t remember the exact words.”
Tom’s jaw tightened. “That was meant for Lady Alice?” His fists clenched. He had to force his hands to relax, but he vowed to make it his personal mission to punish whoever had brought that poison to the feast.
Stephen didn’t notice the fists or the hardened voice, he was so wrapped in his own misery. “Of course I wouldn’t use it. I wouldn’t want a woman to want me because of that.”
“That’s to your credit, my lord.” Bacon spoke smoothly. He probably had noticed the fists and understood them. “Try to remember, if you can, who brought the phial to the feast.”
“I don’t know, Mr. Bacon. I’ve been wracking my brain. They started joking around with it when I went to sit with them.”
“Who was among that group?”
“Well, Anne, of course. Her chambermate, Mary Buckleigh. Bess Throckmorton, Elizabeth Brydges — those are the ladies. The gentlemen were Robert Carey, Sir William Gifford, and Henry Folsham.”
Tom summoned what he knew of those ladies and gentlemen. It wasn’t much. Trumpet would know a lot more.
“Where did the phial itself come from?” Bacon asked.
“I don’t know.” Now Stephen sounded petulant. “I don’t know anything about the blasted phial or the stuff inside it. I told you that already.”
Bacon nodded, imperturbable. It was times like this when Tom admired him most. “I know this is difficult, my lord. I want to form as clear a picture as possible before we determine a course of action. Can you tell me what happened after she drank the contents of that phial?”
Stephen nodded, willing, though he looked close to the end of his rope. He wouldn’t hold up much longer.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s see. She was happy, laughing. We both were. We had just made love again. Last night was our first night together.” He shot a panicky look at Tom. “I don’t know what to do about my wife.”
“One step at a time, my lord,” Bacon said. “Please finish your account.”
“Well, she said was thirsty, so she got up to get a cup of wine. The phial had been sitting there since she came in. I suppose she’d had it in her pocket. She picked it up and waved it at me. I remember how it glinted in the candlelight. I turned it down again. To be honest, I was ready to stop, to send her home and go to sleep. But she said, ‘No, you’ll see, I’ll make your needle sharp again.’” He grimaced at the vulgar term.
Bacon ignored it. “She emptied the phial into her cup and drank it off. Then what happened?”
“Nothing for a minute. She stretched and posed a little, showing me her figure, which I admired. I told her to come back to bed before she got cold, and she said, ‘No, I’m hot.’ She started rubbing her chest and her belly. I thought she was just showing me her breasts. I liked it. I said, ‘Come back to bed, minx,’ or something like that. She shook her head and stumbled, almost falling down. That’s when I knew something was wrong. I got up and pulled on my shirt. ‘Come to bed, sweetling,’ I said, but she started swatting at the air, saying, ‘The cats, Madam, the cats!’”
Bacon shook his head. “What did that mean?”
“I don’t know. She went toward the window and started struggling with the shutters, panting. I went to her to guide her back to the bed, but she pulled away from me. She started spinning around, both arms outstretched, staring up at the ceiling. She said, ‘I see the stars! I’m flying! I’m flying in the wind!’ She seemed to be playing again, but then she cried out and bent double, clutching her belly. Then she sprang up again and spewed vomit all over the bed. Then she collapsed, where she is now. She squirmed, convulsing and moaning. I tried to help her, to hold her, to soothe her brow, but I don’t think she knew I was there. Then she fell asleep, or so I thought. I started to lift her, to tuck her in properly, but I realized she wasn’t breathing. I felt her neck and held my knife under her nose to find a breath, but she was gone.”
Stephen’s eyes had filled with tears as he spoke. Now he stood there with his arms hanging limply at his sides, shaking his head, his mouth turned down.
Tom went to him and put his arms around him, hugging him close. “I’m so sorry, Stephen. I’m so sorry.”
He felt no guilt about stealing the man’s wife — that was Cupid’s work, or some other angel. He could no more stop loving Trumpet than he could bring Lady Anne back to life. But he never wanted Stephen to suffer,
especially not like this.
Stephen let out a wail and sobbed into Tom’s shoulder. After a minute, he lifted his head, took a step back, and drew in a snuffling breath. “I’m all right. Thanks. What are we going to do?”
Bacon had gone over to pick up the phial and was standing with it in his hands, turning it to study the engraved glass. He gave it a tentative sniff and frowned.
“Is there anything to say where it came from?” Tom asked.
Bacon shook his head. “It’s Venetian, I would guess. Smells like distilled liquor, with cinnamon and something bitter.”
“Let’s worry about that thing later,” Stephen said. “Where we can put her?”
Tom looked toward the windows. Even with the shutters closed, he could see enough clear light to know morning had come. “It’s too late, Steenie. There’ll be people everywhere.” The Great Court at Richmond Palace was the least private place he’d ever seen, a vast open pavement surrounded by windows full of curious courtiers.
“Couldn’t we roll her in a rug and take her to her own room?” Stephen went to raise a slat and peer out, as if assessing the distance.
“Where did she live, my lord?” Bacon sounded as if he took the idea seriously, though Tom knew he didn’t.
“In the Gentlewomen’s House — in this range, but a few doors to the north.”
“With Lady Mary, I believe you said.” Bacon regarded him somberly. “They’ll have a servant or two, one supposes.”
“They’ll all be asleep,” Stephen said, pleading.
Bacon shook his head. “I don’t believe it can be managed, my lord.”
“Well, what about the hall?” Stephen turned to Tom. “Or somewhere outside?”
“Steenie, listen to yourself. We cannot dump this poor woman outside like a load of rubbish.”
