Aphra’s representatives, however, were not deceived by this compliance. Pearce was a nasty piece of work who, if he couldn’t get his own way in one thing, would try another. The miller returned to his mill and the other three to the priory where the sight of Aphra’s stony expression warned them that an explanation was overdue. The steward suddenly had an urgent task to fulfil, but neither Uncle Paul nor Santo could escape the impending enquiry, with too little time to prepare their justification for ‘taking matters into their own hands’. And had it not occurred to either of them that she would like to have been consulted before they marched off to deal with a matter which was, after all, her business? She had been wearing a scarf tied over her hair which, when her scolding paused for effect, slipped off to loosen a mass of pale blonde hair. Angrily, she tugged the scarf away from her neck and hurled it to one side, indicating to both men that something had seriously upset her.
‘Hold on a minute,’ said Paul, following his niece into the parlour. ‘What did you want us to do, leave it until you’d discussed it while Miller waits to grind his flour and Pearce plans his next little trick? Be reasonable, Aphie!’
She whirled round to face the two men. ‘Pearce? What does he have to do with it?’
Paul told her, in detail, what had happened to the mill leat and the water. ‘These things must be dealt with straight away,’ he said, ‘and you were—’
‘I was out there!’ she said. ‘I should have been consulted. This estate...’
‘Yes,’ Paul said, ‘we know it’s yours, Aphra. But when you have men here willing to help, you might allow them to—’
‘To take any action they think fit. Is that it? Without me?’
‘Yes,’ said Santo. ‘Pearce had no choice but to back down in front of—’
‘What? You went to see him?’
‘Of course. And he was obliged to listen. He certainly would not have listened to you. You know how men like him try to ride rough-shod over women property-holders.’
‘So he listened to you, did he? Don’t tell me he apologised, too.’ Her eyelids drooped in a show of disdain as she looked away, sure she had won the point.
‘He did,’ said Santo, ‘profusely. And if nothing else, that should warn you that he won’t let it rest there. He’ll find another way to get at your mill. This is the third time, remember, if you count his visit to Miller the other day. He wants your mill, mistress. Your uncle and I assumed you’d appreciate our help in this. Most women would...’
It was the wrong thing to say. ‘Well, I’m not most women, signor,’ Aphra replied, ‘and what I would appreciate in future is to be included in any negotiations about my property.’
‘Aphie,’ said Paul, using his most soothing voice, ‘you are making too much of this. We’ve settled the problem. Isn’t that enough?’
‘No, Uncle. It’s not enough!’
‘Then what...?’
‘Oh!’ she cried, on the verge of tears. ‘Just leave me alone!’ And as if to make that happen, she pushed past them to the door, reaching it just as Santo opened it.
Closing it behind her, he returned the puzzled look in Paul’s eyes, watching for some understanding to dawn behind them. ‘I think, sir,’ he said, ‘that we might have done the wrong thing.’
‘We did the right thing, Santo,’ Paul said, straddling the bench beside the table, catching sight of his muddy boots as he did so. ‘I don’t know what’s got into her. I’ve never seen her like this before. Perhaps it’s time to take our leave.’
‘Is it all getting too much for her, sir? Your brother’s death. My brother’s deceit. Pearce making a nuisance of himself again. Us disturbing her peace? Perhaps you’re right. I’ve obviously outstayed my welcome. I shall go and pack my bags.’
‘I think I’ve fulfilled my duty, too. We’ll not be far behind you.’
‘Your duty, sir? Surely it was more than that?’
‘Of course, but I’m referring to bringing the things that were Ben’s. I had to return his lecture notes and personal items. I wouldn’t want to keep those.’
If Santo’s expression changed very slightly and then returned to normal, Paul did not notice. ‘So Mistress Betterton has them now?’ Santo said, casually.
‘She asked me to put them in her workroom. I expect she’ll derive some comfort from them. But you’re right. It was too soon to invade her grief.’ He swung the muddy boot back over the bench, sighing. ‘Ah well! Better go and break the news. The ladies will not be best pleased.’ Servants bearing armfuls of table linen entered as they left, reminding them that the midday meal was almost ready to be served.
But Paul D’Arvall’s mention of Dr Ben’s notes was more important to Santo than food, for while Aphra was dining with her relatives, he might at last be given the chance to find what he had come for and then leave. In this instance, conscience would have to take a back seat for, if this looked remarkably like theft, he easily consoled himself with the fact that, since she had not yet read the notes, she would hardly notice if any were missing. If the notes returned by Paul D’Arvall did indeed include those lent to Dr Ben by Leon Datini, as Santo had every reason to believe, then as Leon’s elder brother, he had every right to claim them. Such was his reasoning. The only problem would be in trying to recognise which of them belonged to Leon and which to his tutor, for Santo knew next to nothing about the study of insomnia and pain relief, on which his brother had been working since he came to England.
If only Leon’s notes had been taken home with him, as all the other students’ work had been, there would have been no need for this inconvenient trip which, even now, was on the verge of becoming futile. But Leon had explained to him that Dr Ben had asked to borrow his latest research for the prestigious lecture at the Apothecaries’ Hall, a request that had honoured Leon above anything, especially as his tutor had promised to mention him by name. As to why a tutor should wish to borrow the research notes of one of his students, Santo had not asked, assuming that it was not so very unusual.
Quite naturally, Leon also had assumed that, after his decision not to return, it would be a relatively simple matter for Santo to visit Dr Ben at Sandrock Priory and ask for his notes. And so it would, except that everything was now jealously guarded by Dr Ben’s beloved niece who would be as likely to part with her right hand as a single page of them. What better way would she ever find of revenging herself on her former lover, whose name she could not bear to hear spoken?
From his room, Santo watched the procession of kitchen servants carry large dishes of food across from the kitchen to the dining parlour. When all activity ceased, he went across to the old cellarium which was now Aphra’s workroom, entering it via the staircase where he had first met Richard Pearce only a few days ago. He had known then that the rogue would not give up so easily. Feeling decidedly uncomfortable at having to snoop around Aphra’s private workplace, he felt almost relieved to find that the room was not empty after all, but that Aphra was there, sitting very still on a stool near the table where Dr Ben’s leather satchel, various opened packets, a pile of papers tied with string and the leather pouch made an untidy heap. Whether the papers were the controversial notes or not, Santo could not tell and now it seemed unlikely that he ever would. So far, however, they were untouched and, although Aphra gave no sign that she was aware of him, he knew that she was.
Framed by the long silky hair that spilled over her shoulders, her face was pale, her lips compressed into a line suggesting anger more than anything else, he thought. ‘Mistress,’ he said, quietly, ‘I have come to take my leave of you. I don’t believe I can be of any more service to you, in your present frame of mind. My men are packing and we shall be ready to leave...’
‘Goodbye,’ she whispered. ‘I dare say I shall manage.’
There was a finality in the words that did not match her tone. He turned to go, to see if she would say more but, at the top of t
he stairway, he hesitated, reluctant to leave before he’d said what was on his mind. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but I dare say you’ll manage even better when you’ve stopped feeling sorry for yourself, mistress.’
As if she had been waiting for an excuse to continue the previous argument, she leapt to her feet, facing him with her fiercely blazing eyes. ‘Sorry for myself?’ she said. ‘What do you know about how I feel? What can you possibly know? When did your life turn upside-down? When did men walk into your house and take control of your management? That was the very last thing I wanted, signor.’
Santo walked back into the room and, reaching her, saw how she struggled to hold back tears that shimmered on her eyelids. ‘No one has taken control of your management,’ he said, sternly. ‘Everything that has been done was with your permission except today when someone had to act fast to prevent further damage. Which you chose to see as interference. And if you’d been looking and thinking straight, you’d have seen that and thanked your uncle instead of bawling at him like a common fishwife. I imagine he’ll be as glad to leave you to it as I am, Mistress Betterton. Now you can get on with it. Alone.’ Without waiting for the next retort, he headed down the staircase faster than his ascent, almost crashing into Aphra’s brother, Edwin.
Edwin dodged aside. ‘I heard shouting,’ he said. ‘Have you been quarrelling with my sister? Why is she not eating with us? Is it true that you—’
‘Ask her!’ Santo replied, continuing on his way. ‘She has all the answers.’ All the same, he would rather it had not ended like this. He had been assured by both Leon and Sir George, Aphra’s father, that she was the mildest-mannered, sweetest-tempered woman, yet so far he had seen little of that more reasonable aspect. Obviously, he thought, she was finding it very difficult to recover from the double tragedy. Had something happened to upset her that morning, while he and her uncle Paul were dealing with the mill problem? Did she not trust anyone to discuss it with her? Could he perhaps delay his departure long enough to find out? And somehow to get what he’d come for, too?
* * *
Only moments after waving off her uncle’s cavalcade, Aphra was about to return to her workroom when she caught sight of Dante and Enrico preparing to load the Datini baggage on to their packhorse. Santo was not far behind. This was the chance she needed; she must not let it pass. Summoning all her courage, she called out to him. ‘Signor? Could you spare a moment, please?’
She noticed his hesitation, his glance up at the threatening sky and the droop of his shoulders as he dropped the bags he was carrying. His reply was no more than polite. ‘Certainly, mistress. Where?’
‘My workroom. I shall not delay you long.’
Giving instructions to the men, Santo followed her through the courtyard gate and round the west door of the church to where her workroom took over the whole floor above the cellarium, which was being used as a dry store for the goods that had come on the wagons that morning. It also held foods for the kitchen, as well as sacks of spices, salt, tubs of verjuice and dried fruits, the massive space smelling of wheat and oats, pepper and salt bacon. Upstairs, the light from large windows flooded the room where the scent of herbs and paper, chemicals and incense wafted on the air. When Aphra walked over to the bench where her uncle’s possessions were in the process of being examined, the reason for this became clearer.
Indicating the empty leather pouch, she glanced briefly at Santo as if she was aware that he would rather have been elsewhere. His last words to her had been cutting, to say the least, showing her the more ruthless side of his character which, she thought, he probably used on disagreeable merchants. ‘I found these paper packages in that,’ she said, ‘hanging round his neck, Uncle Paul said. Do you recognise the contents, signor?’
Santo bent to look more closely at an opened paper that had been folded to enclose a heap of glittering yellow powder. ‘Gold?’ he said.
‘Yes, powdered gold. And that one?’
The next paper enclosed a pile of small brownish lumps. He poked at it with one finger, then sniffed. ‘Frankincense, quite good quality,’ he said. ‘And this one, I assume, is myrrh. It’s a gum resin, you know. From Arabia. Expensive. Used in perfume. Is that what you wished to know, mistress?’
‘No, signor, I knew that already. What I would like to know is why he would have needed to carry it in a pouch around his neck. And why would these three names have been pinned to the inside of his gown?’ She slid the scrap of parchment towards him, the one given her that morning at breakfast. ‘The names of the three magi. What’s it all about? Do you have any suggestions?’
Santo’s eyesight was good. Tilting it against the light, he peered closely at it, then lay it down again, tapping it for emphasis as he told her, ‘It’s written using blood for ink,’ he said. ‘This is dried blood.’
Aphra’s gasp made him look up. ‘Blood?’ she whispered. ‘Are you sure?’
‘I’ve seen enough blood to be quite sure. Was Dr Ben particularly religious? I mean, fanatically so?’
‘It would have been difficult for him not to be religious, signor. He lived here with the monks for half of his forty years. His uncle was the prior.’
‘So, perhaps that explains it,’ he said, unhelpfully.
‘Not to me,’ she said. ‘Not if it’s viewed in the context of all the other stuff that came on the wagon this morning.’
‘Ah!’ he said.
‘Ah what?’
‘So that’s what upset you. The stuff from Southampton. Not the fact that your uncle and I managed to deal with a problem without you.’
‘Oh! For pity’s sake!’ Aphra said. ‘Can we not put all that aside for a while and talk about this? This is far more important to me than what you two decided to do about the mill. If it’s an apology you want, then you have it! So now can we move on, do you think, or must I do penance, as well?’
‘And that’s an apology, is it? Try again.’
As stand-offs went, it did not last very long, for Aphra knew that he would merely turn to go and that would be the last she would see of him. Ever. So for as long as she dared, she kept her eyes on his, watching for the smallest signal that her time was up. But even as she whispered, ‘I’m sorry...forgive my outburst. I am not quite myself’, he was already walking towards the stairway and the cry she had intended to keep only inside her heart now insisted on being heard. ‘No...no, signor! Don’t go! Please...please?’
He stopped and turned, waiting. ‘Why?’ he said.
‘Because...because I need you here...to help me...please don’t go. There are things here I don’t understand and you appear to know about...such things...and I don’t think I can manage alone. I know I said I could, but...but...’ Her voice quavered on a choking sob and her hand trembled as she held it out to him, feeling the clasp of his fingers on hers, wanting to pull him towards her, to lay her head against the wide expanse of his chest, to feel the comfort of his arms. ‘Will you stay a while longer?’ she whispered, looking down at their hands. ‘Tell your men to unpack?’
His hand squeezed hers, then let it go. ‘There’s nothing here we cannot sort out between us,’ he said, more kindly. ‘I’m sure there’ll be a perfectly reasonable answer somewhere. I’ll go down and tell the men to stable the horses.’
Aphra thought he might do what he had done before and hold her in his arms, but he did not. Shamed by her own uncharacteristic behaviour, she resolved not to fly off the handle as she had recently been doing, for that would drive him away faster than anything else. She wondered, nevertheless, as she waited for him to return, how it might have been if Santo had been in his brother’s place and he her lover instead of Leon, and how she might, or might not, have recovered from the kind of deception she had experienced. Again, had she ever felt quite this way at Leon’s nearness? And would she have pleaded with Leon to stay, after knowing him for less than a week?
Immediately, she banned t
he thoughts as ridiculous. She was done with that kind of thing. Men were unreliable and false, and what reason did she have to believe that the elder Datini would be any different from his brother? Besides, as she had just told him, the mystery of Ben’s death was far more important to her than any problems with the mill, for since she had discovered what he had purchased in his last order from the foreign galleys in Southampton, she realised that it would be impossible to try to explain it by herself. Even in those last few moments, Santo had shown that his experience of life was infinitely greater than hers and more useful in explaining the workings of a man’s mind without the emotions with which, at present, she was clouding them.
‘Now,’ said Santo as he reached the top of the stairway, ‘shall we begin again? What is it you’ve found that’s upset you so? I thought you knew what he’d ordered when you saw his list. Was there something else?’ Lifting his velvet cap, he ran his fingers through his hair, placing the cap on the bench.
His fingers, Aphra noticed, left ridges in the thick brown mass where his cap had made an indent all round. ‘I didn’t actually see the list,’ she said, redirecting her attention from his hair. ‘It was you who told me some of the items, but I didn’t know about all the other things, which I can hardly believe would help to relieve pain and sleeplessness. If that is what in fact he and your brother were studying.’
‘But surely those were not the only problems he made cures for, were they? Didn’t he have cures for stomach upsets and headaches, as other apothecaries do?’
The Mistress and the Merchant Page 9
