A Rustle of Silk: A new forensic mystery series set in Stuart England (A Gabriel Taverner Mystery)

by Alys Clare

  I have no idea whether Grandmother Oldreive’s tree is accurate. Since she was a woman of scrupulous honesty, I am inclined to think it probably is. Her account of my ancestry begins with her four times great-grandfather Gelbert Oldreive, under whose name is inscribed, in my grandmother’s clear hand, of Brocktavy Wood, followed by the magical words fought at Agincourt.

  Before you ask yourself why my father’s mother should be called Oldreive and not Taverner, I should explain that, although she was married to my grandfather Taverner for forty-four years, Grandmother Oldreive chose always to be distinguished by the family name of her forefathers. Possibly she considered that the high-born Oldreives outranked the Taverners.

  As far as I know, it didn’t raise any eyebrows since everybody knew full well that she was married to him. A woman of such irreproachable, iron-clad morality and rock-hard faith would have let no man near her until she had the wedding ring on her finger.

  Grandmother Oldreive was fiercely intelligent, with a rebellious spirit and a questing mind. As a young woman, she utterly refused to accept the opinion of the day, which held that woman was a weak, feeble vessel ruled by her womb and her emotions, given to fits of hysteria and likely to faint at the least provocation, undoubtedly incapable of taking any decision for herself more important than what to wear, even then with the proviso that sometimes a man’s opinion might be needed. Graice Oldreive insisted that she knew her own mind when it came to the choice of a husband, firmly rejecting the suitors paraded before her by her anxious parents and repeating over and over again that the only man for her was Ralfe Taverner, an emphatically masculine, dark-haired, rippling-muscled and very handsome young man who was the son of the village blacksmith and learning the craft himself.

  Graice Oldreive got her own way. She usually did. She and Ralfe produced four children, the youngest of whom was my father, Benedict Taverner. He had set out to be a smith, like his father, grandfather and elder brother, but then he fell in love with Frances Gillard and everything changed.

  My mother was the eldest of her siblings. She had a younger sister, Thomasina, and two little brothers, neither of whom survived infancy. Accordingly, it was she who inherited her wealthy father’s farm, and her new husband – my father – gave up learning to be a smith and instead became a farmer.

  I was their second child, born on 10 June 1572, three years after my brother Nathaniel. After my birth my mother produced two little girls, both of whom died at or soon after birth, and then she had a series of miscarriages and stillbirths. Finally, when I was nine years old, my sister Celia was born. All of us were born – and some of us died – in my mother’s ancestral home, the lovely old farmhouse known as Fernycombe.

  I knew from early on that I didn’t want to be a farmer. Blacksmithing interested me greatly in one particular respect, and I used to spend hours with my grandfather Ralfe, at first only allowed to observe from a safe distance while he transmuted metal with fire and ground blades to a lethal sharpness on his granite: ‘Finest sharpening stone in the whole of Devon, this is,’ he used to say, winking at me as I stood wide-eyed watching the sparks fly.

  Then, as I grew older and more responsible, Grandfather Ralfe began to teach me how to put an edge on a blade. In the course of his long life he had amassed a collection of axes, knives and sundry other ironmongery, and he was only too eager to explain how to get the best out of each and every tool. Because he was so skilled, all the barber surgeons and the sawbones of the area came to him, and from him I learned how to take a knife, a scalpel, an axe or any other of the horribly stained implements that emerged from the surgeons’ leather bags, and restore it to clean, precise, ruthless efficiency.

  ‘Blade’s got to be keen, see,’ one crusty and white-bearded old ship’s surgeon told me. ‘You got a sailor writhing in agony, arm or a leg mangled beyond saving, and you gotta lop that limb off him afore the infection spreads and kills him. Also, see, you’ve got your captain screaming at you because he needs his wounded men back at their posts soon as yesterday, and the quicker you amputate, quicker the sailor starts to recover. Unless he dies, of course,’ he added, ‘which is much the more likely outcome. Speed, though, speed is the sawbones’ watchword, see, because when it’s gotta be done, best do it quickly, and the sharper the blade, the swifter the cut.’

  I couldn’t claim it was that particular old salt who led me to take the path that I followed. It was him; but it was also all the others who came to my grandfather’s forge, with their cruel instruments made marginally less agonizing by the provision of a sharp edge. They told their stories of shipboard life, and from the time of my first understanding I wanted to hear more. I realized, as I matured, that all I wanted was to go to sea, and when I was twelve years old I went to Plymouth and signed on aboard Queen Elizabeth’s ship Nightbird. The Queen’s navy was not an outfit to let a lad’s talents go to waste, and quite soon my knowledge of blades was spotted and I was put to work with the ship’s surgeon.

  My years at sea were exciting, terrifying, arduous, exacting and at times magical, and I wouldn’t have missed them for the world. I explored lonely islands in seas the colour of sapphires under suns that burned like Grandfather Ralfe’s furnace. I saw men like giants, men no bigger than a child, men with yellow skins and men with black skins. I saw, in the words of the playwright, the ambitious ocean swell and rage and foam. I fought with Drake’s fleet and we routed the Armada. In the company of the Sea Dogs I helped take Spanish ships laden with gold and I was awarded my share of the prizes. I observed, took notes, conducted experiments, tried again when I failed. I read everything I could get my hands on that other men in my particular field wrote, sometimes with fierce interest, sometimes, in the case of the most outlandish proposals, with scepticism and scathing laughter. I sat with village healers and wise women, with witch doctors; with tiny black men living so deep in the great river basins of the southern continents that often mine was the first white face they’d ever seen. I watched what they did: I took careful note of what worked and what didn’t and, once I had managed to put my arrogance at what I first thought to be their naive stupidity firmly in my pocket, I learned to respect and envy their access to the deep pool of ancient knowledge passed down through countless generations. I began, slowly and painfully, to be of use to the men whose care and well-being lay in my hands.

  This life came to an abrupt end in the Caribbean when a careless sailor supervising the loading of supplies let a rope slip, so that a very heavy box hit me on the side of the head, just behind my right ear. They thought I was dead. When I came round, after two days and on the voyage back to England, I wished I was: for the first time since the early days of finding my sea legs, I was seasick. And not just once or twice but continuously, relentlessly, violently, my head swimming with vertigo and my stomach heaving up yellow bile that burned as it came out. Had it not been for my captain, who forced me to eat and drink even though I tried feebly to fight him off, I would have died. ‘Drink, you fucking idiot!’ Captain Zeke yelled at me over and over again, forcing the cup to my lips. ‘Drink all you can, even if it comes straight back up again, for it’s your only hope!’

  I thought it was a temporary state. I thought the effects of the blow to the head and the two days of unconsciousness would pass. After the nightmare of the journey back across the Atlantic – we hit bad weather and it took almost eight weeks, Captain Zeke’s beloved Falco bucking and rearing under us like a terrified horse – I thought a few days ashore would see me right. They didn’t. When I tried a brief trip back on the old Falco, Captain Zeke watching like a hawk even though he pretended not to, I was sick all over again, as I was the next ten times I tried.

  Deeply anxious and profoundly depressed, I sank into self-pity and began to drink. Seriously and determinedly, possibly with the aim of drinking myself to death. Captain Zeke – his real name was Ezekiel Colt – sought me out. He drank with me, measure for measure, and wouldn’t leave me alone. When finally I managed to confess my fea
rs, he said, ‘You have to ask yourself, Gabe, if this has happened for a reason.’ He leaned closer, lowering his voice, his expression furtive, almost embarrassed. ‘Way I see it, there you are, doing a good job at sea, hacking and patching, saving lives, thinking things through, happy enough, so why would it be any sort of a good idea to move you on?’ He suppressed an alcoholic burp, not altogether successfully. It was a question, I reflected miserably, that I’d frequently asked myself, although not in those words: the voice that yelled and raged inside my own head tended to say things like why the fuck did it have to happen to me? ‘It’s my belief,’ Captain Zeke went on sonorously, ‘that you’ve been guided, young Gabe.’ He nodded solemnly. ‘I believe some power up there’ – he jerked a thumb towards the filthy ceiling of the dockside dive we were drinking in – ‘has noticed you and singled you out for something better than sewing up sailors.’ Then he gave me a thunderous bollocking, told me to pull myself together and stop feeling so sorry for myself. ‘You have a gift!’ he yelled in the sort of voice that drowns out a storm at sea. ‘Use it! You’re a born healer, so get on with it!’

  So I left the sea and the life I loved more than my own soul.

  When I emerged from my misery, I wondered what to do next. I tried to set up as a surgeon in Plymouth, but it was already an overcrowded occupation and there was no room for a newcomer. So I took myself off to London, where I enrolled in the King’s College of Physicians in order to learn how to be a doctor. Once qualified – and it would prove to be the hardest task I’ve ever faced – I would return to Devon and begin touting for business.

  My years at sea had left me a reasonably wealthy man. I had saved most of what I earned, there being little to spend money on when on board a ship for most of each year. And I had earned very well: Queen Elizabeth had given her captains licence to take the ships of other nations – specifically those of the old enemy, Spain – and help themselves to the contents. Since most of these huge, cumbersome Spanish galleons were lumbering home from the New World laden with purloined silver and gold, it didn’t occur to any of us that we were doing anything wrong. For one thing, the treasure didn’t belong to the Spanish. They had stolen it – ruthlessly and with unbelievable cruelty – and now we in our turn were stealing it from them. And we didn’t slaughter whole villages of men, women and children as we did so. Yes, we slaughtered Spanish sailors, but they killed plenty of us, too, and anyway we were at war, even if nobody actually said so.

  I used a portion of my hoard to purchase a place to live. My parents had offered me a home with them at Fernycombe, but, sore, maudlin, bristling every time I saw the pity in my mother’s eyes, I rejected their kindness. I thought about moving right away, but Devon is in my very blood and I found I couldn’t. After a few desultory weeks during which I inspected perhaps a dozen possible dwellings and found something wrong with every one, I was riding back to Fernycombe one day when I came across Rosewyke.

  It was an early evening in midsummer. I was cross, I had a band of pain radiating from the site of my injury right round my head, and more than anything I felt like shouting at someone. I was drawing close to the small village of Tavy St Luke, and perhaps six or seven miles from Fernycombe, when I noticed a track on my left that wound away towards the river. Sweaty and hot, my head bursting, I thought all at once how pleasant it would be to ride down to the water and let my tired horse drink his fill while I took off my boots and soaked my feet in the cool water.

  The track took its time, turning this way and that, going always gently downwards. It was narrow and bordered with vegetation thick with summer flowers and foliage. I smelt honeysuckle, and my weary eyes were dazzled by the pale pink of the wild roses that grew on both sides of the green tunnel. Slowly a quiet contentment stole over me, and my headache eased. There’s no hurry, I remember thinking. I will reach the river bank eventually.

  The bosky tunnel came to an end and I found myself emerging on to a strip of pebbled shore. The river flowed past, silent, smooth, powerful. I dismounted and let go of the reins. My horse, perhaps affected by the same languor that was enchanting me, walked slowly on to the water, lowered his head and began to drink. I heeled off my boots and waded into the river.

  I don’t know how long I stood there: long enough for dusk to fall and the first bats to emerge, wheeling and diving around me but never once touching. Stars were starting to appear in the deep blue sky: idly I located the three bright summer stars, Altair, Deneb and Vega. In the west the sun had gone down below the horizon, although it was still close enough to produce a vivid wash of gold and orange.

  I reached for my boots, took my horse’s reins and we set off back up the path. I was in a dream, I think: outside myself. Halfway back to the road, I spotted another track, leading off to the left. Why not follow it? I thought.

  This smaller track was steeper, its verdant walls pressing closer. It was as well I was not mounted, for there was scant headroom. After quite a climb, the path abruptly ended and I stepped out into the soft, golden light. The last of the sunset, over to my left, painted red streaks across the sky.

  Before me stood a house. It was built of small reddish bricks and it was in the shape of the letter E, with protruding wings on the left and right and a shallower one in the middle, in which there was a porch. To the left was a tangle of fruit bushes, wildly overgrown: I made out redcurrant, white currant, gooseberry, raspberry. I moved over to them, picking a handful of deep red, succulently juicy raspberries and cramming them in my mouth. On the other side of the house, furthest away from the river, I could see a thick, unruly hedge, behind which I could just make out the shadowy shapes of outbuildings.

  The house was deserted. That was suggested from the state of the grounds and confirmed when I approached the big old wooden door, which hung from only one of its original three hinges and succumbed readily to the pressure of my shoulder.

  I stepped into the hall.

  It was wide and high. On the far side, a staircase wound its way to the upper storey. To right and left, arched doorways opened into further rooms: small parlour, kitchen and servant’s room to the right, two larger rooms – library and a second parlour, perhaps – to the left. I wandered on, mounting the stairs. They were old, stained, covered in dust and sundry animal and bird droppings, but they were sturdy and sound. Upstairs was a long gallery to the rear, off which led a large, central bed chamber and an arrangement of smaller ones.

  Thoughtfully I descended again and stood, silent and still, in the hall. I stood there some time. I think my deep, inner mind knew the moment my eyes first lit on this house that it would be mine and in the course of that time – long, short, I don’t really know – the message reached my consciousness.

  I was very late returning to Fernycombe and my mother had been worried. I took her in my arms and gave her the sort of hug I hadn’t seemed capable of since the accident had taken away my life as I’d known it. I felt her shock and surprise; she gave a soft little moan and I heard her whisper, ‘Oh, Gabriel. Oh, my son.’

  I went on holding her. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said softly. We both knew I was apologizing for a great deal more than just being late for dinner. ‘It’s going to be all right now.’

  In the morning I set out early and began my enquiries. Less than a fortnight later, Rosewyke was mine.

  It crept gently into its permanent place in my heart quite quickly, so that it was a wrench when I had to leave to go to London and begin my studies. But the pain of leaving a beloved place is rewarded by a corresponding joy upon returning, and so it was with me, when I quit my lodgings – in a tall, narrow house near St Paul’s – for the last time and came home.

  I keep a small staff: Sallie is my housekeeper, and she calls on a couple of sturdy girls from Tavy St Luke whenever she has need of extra hands. Samuel looks after the livestock and grounds: he is a solemn, reserved countryman, no doubt in the mould of his forefathers through countless generations, and never ventures two words if one will do. I have no idea if
I like him or not; it is not relevant to our respective positions and, indeed, how can you determine your feelings for a man who holds his entire being within himself? Samuel is efficient and he works hard, and that suffices. Tock – poor, simple Tock – is a cross we all have to bear; the main burden falls upon Samuel’s narrow shoulders, but I do not hear him complain.

  To the rear of the house the yard is surrounded by fruit trees, and a more extensive orchard of apple, pear and medlar shelters the property from the northerly winds. To the right of the yard there is a hedge concealing the privies and the midden. Within the yard there are the dairy, the bake house, the well, Samuel and Tock’s modest quarters, store rooms and a stable. We have chickens and a house cow. I have a sturdy black gelding called Hal and a large black dog with ginger patches over his eyes that I named Flynn, after an Irish sailor I once sailed with who had violently orange eyebrows and a fiery temper to match.

  I took up my permanent place in this rural idyll some eighteen months or so back. Since then I’d been getting on all right; I had attracted several patients, not a few of whom are wealthy and able to treat their doctor well in the hope that by so doing he will always come as soon as he is summoned. Life had been tentatively and steadily improving, except for one thing: it had become uncomfortably obvious that the new physician in the area was poaching on someone else’s patch and treading on their toes.

  The succession of little gifts left on my doorstep began relatively innocuously, and had never been sufficient to cause my stalwart Sallie more than a tut or two and a bit of a moan. Today, however, the offering was more gruesome: whoever it was that resented my presence and my growing doctor’s practice had stepped up their efforts quite dramatically.