Let Slip the Dogs

by Anna Castle

  Worse, he would never forgive himself.

  He did not suspect Sir Charles. Panic and poison were as unlikely for him as for Sir Walter. But Lady Rich was a bird of another feather. Francis had no illusions about women’s capacity for intrigue or their desire for power. His own mother had survived queen Mary’s bloody reign, and he’d heard rumors about infamous figures such as Lucrezia Borgia and Catherine de’ Medici. Penelope Rich struck him as a kindred spirit, albeit on a smaller stage. She must have read Machiavelli, being an educated woman in the Earl of Essex’s circle. But one didn’t need historical precedents to recognize the usefulness of poison in removing an enemy. And like a serpent, she might strike if surprised.

  Her husband was only interested in money, but her brother had vast aspirations, worthy of her skills. If she were mired in a tawdry scandal, however, Essex’s name would be soiled as well. The queen loathed scandals. They were vulgar and promoted cynicism about the royal court among the people. Lady Rich might see murder as her only recourse. She might even see it as justified given her brother’s potential for greatness.

  The Earl of Essex was also Francis’s best hope for advancement. He’d spent so many years believing the bonds of kinship would tug at his uncle’s conscience and draw forth some worthy position. Looking back, he could see only rebuffs and empty promises. If he wanted to move forward in his life, he must find a more ardent advocate.

  That advocate must be free of tarnish to be effective, which meant his sister must also be free of disgraceful imputations. All political relationships were built on trust — or the appearance of it.

  Francis kicked a small stone out of his path and watched it sink into the soft mud at the river’s edge. His heart sank with it. How honorable was he when his own desires were at stake? If he learned that Lady Rich played a part in these sorrowful deaths, would he have the moral strength to speak against his own self-interest?

  TWENTY-TWO

  ON TUESDAY MORNING, Tom sat with his feet on the desk in the kennel office, picking his teeth with the end of his quill, thinking about Trumpet and the fun they’d had in this room yesterday after Mr. Bacon left. They’d closed the shutters, locked the door, and made another attempt to start that ninth earl growing in her belly. He knew he ought to get up and do some investigating, but he just couldn’t push himself out of this reverie.

  Then the kennel master let himself in the half-open door. “Mr. Clarady?”

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Lacey?” Tom swung his legs down with a thump. “Something about the queen’s hunt tomorrow?”

  “In a manner of speaking.” Lacey closed the door behind him and moved closer to the desk. “It’s His Lordship — my lord of Dorchester.”

  “Oh. Is he getting in your way?”

  Lacey wouldn’t say the words, but his expression made them clear enough. Stephen was making a nuisance of himself. “He seems to have a somewhat theatrical notion of how things work, if you understand me. We can’t decide in advance where the stag will choose to make his last stand. And it would be peculiar, if you’ll allow the word, to befringe the whole forest with banners.”

  “Peculiar is putting it mildly! Don’t worry, I’ll find something else for His Lordship to do.” Tom rose and put on his hat. Stephen was the one person in the world who could stop him from dreaming about Trumpet.

  Mr. Lacey smiled his thanks. “The gamekeeper and I have everything well in hand. The lads are ready to start the quest as soon as it’s light enough to see your hand before your face. The dogs are ready too.”

  “I’m looking forward to this, Mr. Lacey.”

  “Oh, it’ll be a great day, Mr. Clarady; watch and see. All the ladies and gentlemen in their fine clothes, riding their beautiful horses, with the hounds bounding ahead, baying in their cheerful voices. ’Long as it doesn’t rain, which isn’t likely, it’ll be a great day.”

  He went out. Tom left on his heels. He found Stephen in his bedchamber, trying on hats with different feathers, grousing about how small the room was.

  “Now that one really suits you, my lord. It makes you look an inch taller.” Tom would’ve said that if the man had tied his breeches around his head. “You should wear that one tomorrow.”

  Stephen frowned at his narrow face in the mirror, then set the hat aside. “If the whole thing isn’t a complete failure. They don’t seem at all interested in my ideas.”

  “They have their own ways, my lord. Local traditions, you know. Best to let them get on with it. Your part comes tomorrow at the gathering and then the hunt breakfast. Have you chosen a weapon for the queen? What do you think? A pistol?”

  “A pistol! Are you mad? Her Majesty doesn’t want her weapon blowing up in her hands.” Stephen, as expected, brightened up at the opportunity to correct someone else’s ignorance. “I asked Sir Walter, and he confirmed my selection. Her Majesty prefers a small crossbow. A wise choice for a woman.”

  “Ah yes, of course.” Tom nodded and gazed out the window as if fixing that wisp of wisdom in his mind. Then he offered Stephen a tentative smile. “I wonder if you could spare an hour or two to help me out, my lord.”

  “In what fashion?”

  “Mr. Bacon gave me a list of things to investigate.” He dropped his voice. “Concerning Lady Anne’s murder.”

  “Anything,” Stephen answered at once. “Anything at all. I loved her, Tom. She really liked me, and she was such fun to be with. And her father is very rich. If she’d been a little older and my father had died a little sooner . . .” He shrugged.

  He hadn’t spoken that way about her before she died, but he deserved full credit for his desire to see her death avenged. “I knew I could count on you.”

  “What do we do? Talk to the witnesses?”

  Tom nodded as if considering it. “There aren’t likely to be any witnesses as such, my lord, apart from you. Although we do want to talk to your friends about that phial, see if we can work out who brought it to the supper. But first, I thought we’d start with something more lively. Let’s go have a look at that orchard wall.”

  “Which orchard wall?”

  Tom explained about Arthur Grenville’s death, sketching the body, the ladder, the tree, and the wall with his finger on the dressing table. “We’re thinking he surprised someone hiding a letter behind a loose brick in the wall, and they hit him with it.”

  “Must’ve been a pretty hot letter! What does Mr. Bacon think it was about?”

  “Government policy, the queen’s private opinions, that sort of thing.” Tom decided to steer clear of the whole idea of illicit lovers.

  Stephen whistled. “A Spanish spy, I’ll wager. Another Catholic problem, eh?”

  “Spanish or French, my lord. We don’t know. Shall we go have a look? We might not find anything, but you know how thorough Mr. Bacon is.”

  “I remember.” Stephen chose a plain velvet cap and waved his servants off as they marched through the anteroom. He seemed more eager than any other time since he’d arrived in Richmond, apart from Midsummer Eve. Maybe all the man needed was a worthy purpose. His father had never respected him enough to offer him one.

  Inspecting a mossy old wall brick by brick wasn’t a particularly heroic start, but it delivered a reward in a matter of minutes. Mr. Shrimpington had evidently only tested bricks five and half feet from the ground. Tom and Stephen, both just under six feet, started with their arms fully outstretched. Stephen found the loose brick less than a yard from where the body had lain.

  What’s more, he found a letter inside the hole. “Shall we open it?”

  Tom drew in a long breath between his teeth. He wanted to, and they’d certainly earned it, but what if it was a note from Sir Walter or Sir Charles to Mrs. Throckmorton or Lady Rich? He doubted any of those worldly-wise persons would use this risky method, but he’d been wrong before. “Best not. One thing I’ve learned working for Mr. Bacon is that there are some secrets I don’t want to know.”

  “The killer might come after us,” Stephe
n said, handing the letter over. “I’ve been wondering about that. If they killed Anne because she knew something she shouldn’t, wouldn’t they guess that she’d told that thing, whatever it is, to me?”

  “Good question.” And one Tom hadn’t thought of. “Do you know anything?”

  “Of course not. I never do. Besides, Anne and I had other things on our minds that night than Catholic spies, I assure you.”

  Tom tucked the letter inside his doublet for safekeeping until he could give it to Mr. Bacon. “It might be something that seems of no importance. Just a lady having a conversation with a secretary, for example. But my guess is that Anne saw the person who killed Arthur, either right before or right after. Not enough to be certain, but enough to worry about. Then maybe she said something to that person and they poisoned her to stop her mouth. Are you sure she didn’t say anything about Grenville or the orchard? Maybe while she was babbling?”

  Stephen shook his head, his eyes bleak. “She wasn’t making any sense by then, Tom. But I’ll try to remember.”

  “If you can. And in the meantime, Stephen — watch your back.”

  Next on the list was to visit every apothecary from Isleworth to Ham to ask about ladies or foreign persons making purchases of henbane. They would save Richmond village for last so as not to start the inevitable tale-telling until they were done.

  As the wherryman rowed them downstream to their first stop, Stephen kept turning around to look over his shoulder. He must have taken Tom’s warning to heart. It was extremely unlikely a threat would overtake them in the middle of the river in broad daylight, but Tom didn’t scoff at him or even think less of him for it. He hadn’t mentioned it, but that poison might well have been meant for the groom as well as his lover — or his bride. Either the assassin was a person of limited imagination, or they’d intended to kill Stephen as well as whichever lady brought home the phial.

  No one had served a foreigner in his shop, though some didn’t really understand the question. “Like from the north, d’ye mean?”

  “A Frenchman,” Tom kept saying. “Or a Spaniard,” Stephen always added, alarming the shop men into sputtering denials.

  “Could be someone who doesn’t speak English,” Tom suggested.

  “How’m I supposed to serve a customer who don’t speak English?” one exasperated man asked.

  Tom tried to explain that the man might speak English with an accent. He might have dark hair and eyebrows, which was about all he could remember of the man sitting next to Mr. Bacon at the wedding supper. He should’ve gotten a better description.

  They likewise got nowhere asking about henbane. As the apothecary in Twickenham put it, “I don’t sell much henbane, not as such. I sell a lot of my ointment for gout, but to old fisherman, not young ladies. Now if you’ve got a problem with lice, I can offer you this lotion. That’s got henbane in it.”

  Most of them forgot that Tom and Stephen didn’t want the stuff themselves and tried to sell them a variety of remedies that contained henbane or were meant for maladies also treated by henbane. The herb seemed to be used in practically everything applied to the outside of the body — but in small quantities, they were told over and again.

  When they pressed for uses meant to be swallowed, especially in the form of a love potion, they were treated to narrowed eyes and wagging fingers. “That’s not something you young gentlemen ought to be messing about with!”

  They got a fuller lecture from the man in Ham. “Love potions can be very dangerous, very dangerous indeed. At best, they might make you feel a slight increase in vigor for a short time. More like, they’ll just make your lady a little befuddled. And that’s not what you want, now is it, gentlemen?”

  They also got prescriptions for everything from oil of narcissus to a perfect red rose, if it was lovemaking they were wanting to do. The apothecary in Petersham recommended a spiced honey mixture — his own secret recipe — meant to be stirred into hot wine. “Guaranteed to put your lady in the mood for cuddling.”

  After tasting a sample, Tom and Stephen each bought a small pot.

  “I hope this stuff will keep,” Stephen said as they picked their way down the muddled lane to the river. “Neither one of us has a lady to share it with at present.”

  “You still have a wife, don’t you?” Tom knew better, but he couldn’t stop picking at that sore.

  Stephen blew out a rude breath. “She only speaks to me in public. I had no idea she would dislike me so much. I didn’t expect us to be Tristan and Isolde, but I thought she’d at least give it an honest try.”

  Tom refrained from pointing out that Isolde had been married to King Mark, which would make him Tristan, if one wanted to be accurate about it. In which case, the story was playing out perfectly so far. Though it had a tragic ending, come to think of it.

  “You’ll learn to get along in time, my lord. It isn’t easy for persons of your station, from what I’ve seen. The people making the arrangements don’t much care about your feelings.”

  “True enough. My parents could barely tolerate each other. Still, they had four children, or four that lived.”

  “That’s right. And your mother keeps a grand and well-ordered house. And she manages your estates to support whatever you choose to do. I’ll bet your lady will do the same.”

  “I suppose you’re right.” Stephen still sounded glum.

  It wouldn’t help to have him mooning about his chambers day and night. “You should find another lover, my lord. It won’t be hard. You told me there were ladies aplenty looking for fun on a summer progress.”

  “But I’m in mourning for Anne. I should wait a few weeks, don’t you think?”

  Tom pretended to weigh a proper period of abstinence. “That’s a nice thought. A testament to the depth of your affections and to your respect for women in general.”

  “Ladies like that,” Stephen said. “That part about respect, I mean. Especially these noble ones. They seem to expect it.” He spoke as if confiding a shrewd bit of advice.

  Tom nodded gravely, as if the idea that women liked to be treated as people was news to him. “But you mustn’t brood, my lord. And you want comforting in your sorrow. Anyone can see that.”

  “A woman’s soft voice in my ear, a tender touch. And then perhaps a little of this special honey in her wine . . .” He grinned his old wenching grin, making Tom laugh.

  “That’s more like the Steenie I used to know!”

  “But you’re a fine one to give me advice, Thomas Clarady. No more spending your days and nights with those smelly hounds. I’m going to find someone for you while I’m about it. A tall, fair-haired damsel with clear blue eyes.” He winked broadly. “You see, I even remember the kind of woman you like.”

  Tom didn’t bother to correct him. His taste had changed in the past few years, or rather narrowed to one specific woman. Black hair, green eyes, short on the outside, but with the courage of a warrior and the wits of a campaigning admiral.

  They caught one last wherry for the short trip down to Richmond, and there, at last, they found success. Tom told him he was asking on behalf of the midwife, which worked like a magic charm.

  “That’s my sister,” the apothecary said. “Of course I heard about that poor lady. But it couldn’t have been my potion she drank, not if Ruth thinks there was henbane in it. I would never add that to anything meant to be drunk or eaten.”

  Tom asked. “Could someone have added henbane to it later? A tea or a what-d’ye-call-it?”

  “Tincture? Extract?” The apothecary shrugged. “Steep some crushed seeds in wine and you’d have yourself a nasty poison, all right. But I can’t tell you what happens after the customer leaves my shop.”

  “But you do make a love potion.”

  “Yes, but it doesn’t have henbane in it, so don’t go back to the palace saying it did. That’s a very dangerous drug. My potion’s mostly French wine, twice distilled, with exotic flavorings to liven it up.” He leaned over his counter and lowered
his head to confide, “It makes you tipsy all on a sudden, but the effect doesn’t last long.”

  “Have you sold any recently?” Tom asked.

  “I fill an order once a week for the French ambassador. He thinks it works better if it’s made fresh. He even has his own special bottle for it — a pretty little thing, just big enough for a few doses.”

  Tom’s pulse quickened. “Who picks it up?”

  “One of his gentlemen.”

  “Does he speak English?”

  “Very well for a stranger, though he has an obvious accent.”

  Tom got a description of sorts: taller than short, neither fat nor thin, dark hair, brown eyes. Nice enough looking, if you don’t mind a big nose. A smiling sort of a fellow. It could be Mr. Bacon’s friend or any of a dozen Englishmen they’d seen going about their business that day.

  “We should’ve started here,” Stephen said as they walked onto the street.

  “No, we did it right. We had to visit all the other places anyway, or Mr. Bacon would’ve made me go back, for completeness. And we wanted to get our answer before rumors started flying about two gentlemen asking about strangers buying love potions.”

  They walked down the middle of the lane leading into the kitchen yard, making working folks step around them. “Where now?” Stephen asked.

  “Let’s go back to the kennel office and have something to eat. I’d like to work things through a bit before reporting to Mr. Bacon.” And he definitely did not want Stephen at his elbow when he went looking for the man. The last thing they needed was a repeat of the library incident with the Earl of Gossip peering over his shoulder.

  They sent the boy for pies and wine, threw their hats on the bench, and took up their customary seats: Tom behind the desk, Stephen in the armchair by the cold hearth. When the refreshments came, Tom stirred in a little of his new spiced honey.