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

by Alys Clare

  As I gave her a leg-up her wide silk skirts caught the breeze and I noticed her riding boots. They were of soft chestnut leather, well-worn but highly polished, obviously cared for. ‘Those, I believe, are mine,’ I observed.

  She gave me her winning smile. ‘I know. But admit, Gabriel, it’s years and years since you wore them! You’d never get your great feet into them now, so I thought I might as well have them. Shame to see a good pair of boots go to waste, and there’s plenty of wear in them.’

  I wondered what else of mine she had helped herself to while staying at our parents’ house. Suddenly I understood why she had been so anxious not to have me handle her odd-shaped pack: I might well have felt through the soft leather the remembered outline of other possessions I’d left in my mother’s care at Fernycombe.

  I looked up at Celia, shielding my eyes against the westering sun. I didn’t begrudge her my boots; as she pointed out, they were no more use to me. I’d taken everything I wanted when I moved out and she was welcome to anything of mine that I’d left behind.

  For some reason, I was filled with sudden, profound affection for my sister.

  ‘Shall I ride with you?’ I suggested. ‘It’ll be getting dark soon, and—’

  ‘No. Thank you,’ she added.

  ‘Are you sure? I could drop in and say good evening to Jeromy, and perhaps—’

  ‘He won’t be there – I told you, he’s gone to Exeter – and I’m going to have an early night,’ she said firmly.

  ‘But he’ll be back soon?’ Still I felt uneasy.

  ‘Yes, dear Gabriel, probably tomorrow.’ Some expression flashed in her eyes briefly – excitement? passion? – and I wondered at the power of her love for him, that the very thought of his homecoming could elate her so.

  She must see something in him that the rest of us had missed …

  She reached down and kissed me. ‘Goodbye, Gabriel. Please thank Sallie for the refreshments and tell her the tartlets were especially delicious.’

  ‘I will,’ I said absently. ‘Celia, stay,’ I added impulsively. ‘You will be returning to an empty house, and—’

  ‘It’s not empty,’ she replied with a touch of hauteur. ‘You forget, we have plenty of servants.’ She raised her chin, a proud light in her eyes, and I could hear the unspoken comment: better ones than you see fit to engage, despite Sallie’s tartlets.

  But perhaps I did my sister an injustice, for her face softened into a loving smile. ‘Thank you all the same,’ she said. ‘I’ll come and stay again soon, I promise.’ Then she touched her heels to the mare’s sides and the horse sprang into a brisk walk, then a lively trot.

  I watched my sister ride away. Then I turned and went back inside the house.

  The days gradually lengthened. Sallie finally finished her spring cleaning and we broached a new barrel of beer to celebrate. Tock reached the bottom of the midden, and the vegetable plot now steamed and reeked gently under the strong sun.

  I acquired a new patient.

  I was working in my study one morning towards the end of the month when I was summoned to the door. A farm labourer stood there, cap twisted in his hands, blood soaking the front of his jerkin and hose. ‘Can you come quick, Doctor?’

  I grabbed my bag, which stands ready in the hall. ‘Yes. But if you’re injured I should examine you here and now, for delay can—’

  ‘Ain’t me, it’s Master,’ the man said succinctly.

  I followed him out of the house, matching his pace as he hurried off down the track. ‘Is it far? I can fetch my horse but it’ll take time.’ Hal was out in the field, almost certainly right over on the far side where the trees on the river bank gave shade.

  ‘No. This side of the village.’

  We ran on.

  He was right, it wasn’t far. After less than a quarter of a mile the man turned right, off the main track and up a narrower path that wound up a slight rise. Before us, Tavy St Luke spread out in the hollow over to the right. I could make out the church spire, and some figures dotted on the village green. Our destination, though – and presumably my bleeding patient – was ahead.

  We turned a final bend and came to a small hamlet of five or six dwellings and a collection of outbuildings. One house was larger than the rest and apparently a small farmhouse. The door was open and from inside I heard someone wailing; a high, continuous note like an animal in a trap.

  Dear Lord.

  My companion read my mind. ‘That ain’t Master, that’s her. Young Mistress. Hysterical, like. Hates the sight of blood.’

  She wasn’t going to make much of a farmer’s wife if she threw a fit at the sight of blood.

  I went inside.

  A young man lay on the floor before the fireplace. Two indoor servants hovered around him and a woman with flying brown hair – loose and wild, as if she had been tearing at it – crouched over his rigid body. He was cradling his left arm to his chest, gritting his teeth to hold back the cries. Just as well, as his wife was making enough noise for both of them. I took hold of her shoulder, gently but firmly. ‘Come away now, Mistress,’ I said. ‘I’m the doctor. Let me see the injury.’

  She wheeled round, her hands flying out as wildly as her hair. One of them caught me across the mouth. It hurt. ‘He’s going to lose his arm!’ she shrieked, right in my face. ‘Oh, oh, OH, what will become of us?’

  I met the eyes of the elder female servant, indicating the shrieking woman with an inclination of the head. ‘Get her away,’ I muttered. ‘Hot, sweet drink of some sort, and clean her up.’ Like the man who had summoned me, the young wife was soaked in blood.

  At last, I had my patient to myself.

  He was conscious, but barely. His face was deathly pale, brown eyes huge. I said calmly, ‘I am going to remove your clothes. I will be as swift as I can.’

  I pulled away the tunic and tore away the undershirt. The wound opened up before me like a gaping red mouth. It was above the main upper-arm muscle, but through the mess of blood I could see the ends of severed tendons and vessels.

  I thought at first I would have to remove the arm. Then, beginning to wash away the blood with the cloth and pail of hot water that the man who had fetched me had helpfully placed beside me, I saw that it might be salvageable.

  I knew exactly what I had to do. It was a procedure I’d done countless times before in my years at sea, where the risks already inherent in a sailor’s life – disease, poor nutrition, hazardous work – had been greatly increased by the development of the new weapons. You don’t have to have much imagination to visualize what sort of harm two crews can bestow on each other when their ships fight at close quarters and they are trying to blast each other to bits with cannon and musket fire. The poor sods working the cannon were as vulnerable to harm from their own weapons, given a cannon’s tendency to hurl itself backwards when fired and demolish any limb in its path.

  This young farmer’s arm hadn’t been almost hacked off by some vicious fragment of red-hot metal produced by naval weaponry, but it didn’t make any difference. The injury was almost identical, whatever had caused it, and I reckoned I could help him.

  My patient opened his eyes and stared up at me. ‘Will you have to cauterize it?’ he whispered. I saw the deep fear and the panic begin to take hold.

  ‘No,’ I said gently. ‘I am not in favour of the hot oil method.’ I patted his uninjured arm reassuringly. Then, looking up at the younger of the female servants, I gave my orders.

  I first came across this novel treatment for amputations and severe cuts in a publication called The Method of Curing Wounds Caused by Arquebus and Firearms, written by a French army doctor named Ambroise Paré. Horrified at both the agony suffered by, and the mortality rate of, patients treated by the cauterization method, he had taken advantage of a situation where the oil had run out to experiment with something else.

  The new treatment worked. It was what I was going to use now.

  The woman had brought me egg yolks, rose water and turpentin
e. The wound, washed as clean as I could make it, was ready. I gave my patient a mouthpiece to bite down on, then began to put the severed blood vessels back together. I applied clamps called becs de corbin – another Paré invention: translated it means crows’ beaks – and slowly the flesh came together again. Then I applied a thick, cool poultice, wrapping the whole of the upper arm in a length of clean white linen.

  My patient – who had passed out during the ligature phase – now opened his eyes. ‘Have you finished?’ he muttered through chewed and bloody lips. He had long ago spat out the mouthpiece.

  ‘I have.’ I smiled down at him. ‘You still have your arm.’

  He twisted his head, looking wide-eyed at the large bandage. ‘It feels … it feels cool,’ he said.

  ‘Let’s hope and pray it stays that way.’ I got up, stretching my aching back. ‘Send for me the instant you feel any heat in the wound.’ I looked at the woman who had served as my nurse. She seemed sensible and capable. ‘You too – keep asking him, keep feeling the flesh for heat.’

  She nodded.

  I wanted to leave, but I supposed I should reassure the panicky wife first. I straightened my shoulders and went through into the small, stone-flagged kitchen. She was sitting on a stool beside the table. The older servant was busy at a sink in the far corner of the room.

  But she hadn’t left the young wife to look after herself. A slender, fair-haired man dressed in black, about my own age or maybe a few years older, stood at her side. His position and his protective attitude were strongly suggestive of a guardian angel.

  ‘I heard you say we should pray for young William,’ he said in a pleasant, mellifluous voice. His ‘s’ sounds were slightly sibilant. ‘Katharine and I have already been doing so.’ He stepped forward, holding out his hand. ‘Jonathan Carew. I am the vicar of St Luke’s, Tavy St Luke.’

  I took his hand. ‘Gabriel Taverner.’

  He nodded. ‘Yes, I know. So, the arm has stayed on?’

  ‘Yes.’ For now, I might have added, but I decided it was overly pessimistic.

  ‘I’m impressed,’ said Jonathan Carew. ‘I saw what happened. He had been chopping wood, fell over his own feet and landed on the axe blade. I didn’t think there would be any option but to amputate.’

  The young woman – Katharine – gave a groan and laid her head down on her arms, folded on the table.

  ‘I used to be a ship’s surgeon,’ I said.

  Jonathan Carew nodded his understanding. ‘How very fortunate for William, then, that you were the doctor summoned to his aid.’ He glanced down at Katharine’s bent head, the wild hair spread on the table top like a rich blanket. There was an expression of faint distaste in his lean face, as if he privately thought she ought to have done better. ‘I do not believe there is any more I can do here,’ he went on. ‘May I ride home with you?’

  ‘I’m at Rosewyke,’ I said. ‘It’s the other direction from Tavy St Luke.’

  ‘I know.’ I wasn’t sure if he meant he knew our roads lay in opposite directions, or that he was aware of where I lived. ‘I would still like to ride with you.’

  ‘I’m on foot.’ I felt awkward; as if I were giving every reason to avoid him. ‘I’m sorry,’ I added impulsively, ‘I must sound very grudging and rude. I would welcome your company, if you don’t mind leading your horse.’

  ‘Not in the least.’ He caught the servant’s eye, raised his eyebrows and jerked his head in the direction of the prostrate figure lying across the table. The woman nodded: whatever silent order he had given, she understood and would carry it out.

  Jonathan Carew turned to me. For the first time, he smiled. I’d rarely seen a lightening of the expression so change a man’s appearance.

  As we left the farmhouse, I decided I was looking forward to his acquaintance.

  ‘I would have called upon you when you took up permanent residence at Rosewyke,’ Jonathan Carew said as we set off down the winding path, ‘only it was my understanding that you worship elsewhere.’

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. I felt vaguely apologetic. ‘I was born in the area – the house is called Fernycombe, and is situated near the river to the north-east of here. When I left the navy I stayed there with my parents for some time and got back into the habit of attending church with them.’

  ‘I quite see how someone in your position might feel the call to return to the church, and perhaps also the priest, he had known as a boy.’ It was a generous remark. I wondered, however, quite what the vicar meant: did he know about the accident that had brought my naval career to such an abrupt and unwelcome end?

  ‘I suppose I could—’ I began.

  But Jonathan Carew held up a well-shaped, well-cared-for hand. ‘If you were about to say you could change your habits to attend St Luke’s instead, please let me forestall you.’ He gave me that smile again. ‘Whilst the recusancy laws oblige us all to attend Protestant services, as yet the legislation does not specify where that worship must take place.’ His tone was neutral; carefully so, I thought. He glanced at me out of intelligent eyes; they were a particular shade of deep, blue-tinged green. ‘Pray where you will, Doctor Taverner.’

  We walked on, momentarily in silence. He had been considerate in giving me every reason not to attend his church but, nevertheless, I had the feeling I was going to. There was something about the man that intrigued me.

  ‘Have you been the incumbent at St Luke’s for long?’ I asked presently. ‘Forgive me for not knowing.’

  ‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘No, not long.’

  I waited for him to continue but he didn’t. Wondering if I was being discourteous in pursuing my questioning, I said, ‘And before that?’

  He paused for so long that I wondered if he wasn’t going to answer, or perhaps had simply not heard. But then he said, ‘Before St Luke’s I was briefly in London, and prior to that, at Cambridge.’

  I wasn’t sure I’d heard: had he said at Cambridge or in Cambridge? The two had rather different meanings. ‘At college?’ I asked.

  ‘Trinity Hall. Canon law.’ All at once he had become as unforthcoming as the farm hand who earlier had fetched me. Then the strange green eyes met mine in an intense look. ‘I was to have entered the law, but various influences and pressures steered my steps instead into the priesthood. The study of canon law, I suppose, began as a compromise.’

  He fell silent. I was quite glad of it, for my thoughts were racing. This man was clearly an intellectual – his very demeanour shouted that, never mind the years of study at Trinity Hall – and he had been destined, surely, for some position a great deal more elevated than vicar of a tiny village parish in the wilds of Devon.

  Had something happened? Had something gone amiss with the potentially illustrious career? Had some figure of power high up in the church hierarchy taken grave offence, and shoved Jonathan Carew right out of the light and into the out-of-the-way darkness of Tavy St Luke’s?

  I hoped, as I shot a surreptitious glance at my companion, that I was going to find out.

  THREE

  Jonathan Carew and I parted company at the end of the track leading up to Rosewyke. I offered refreshments, for I was enjoying the challenge of his company, but he politely declined. Then he mounted his horse – a bay cob gelding with a broad blaze – and set off back the way we had just come.

  I walked on thoughtfully to my door. So thoughtfully, indeed, that I missed what lay across the step until I had all but stepped on it.

  I stopped dead.

  ‘It is the bright day that brings forth the adder,’ I said aloud.

  It wasn’t an adder but a blindworm, well over a foot long, fat and glossy, which barred the way. I knew the creature was harmless but seeing it there was unexpected, to say the least. Thinking I’d better remove it before Sallie found it, I bent down to pick it up, planning to deposit it back in the grass.

  My fingers closed on its upper body, just behind the head. As I straightened up, holding the worm’s smooth shape firmly, the head rem
ained on the ground.

  With a soft curse, I crouched down for a closer look.

  The head had been bitten cleanly off, probably by a buzzard or a fox. And it had not happened there on my doorstep: someone must have found the blindworm, very recently dead, and, shooing away whatever predator had killed it, picked it up to reassemble it where I could not fail to find it.

  It wasn’t a pretty sight, and I had to admit that I’d been mildly shocked to find the creature had been decapitated. Nevertheless, this latest offering wasn’t in the same class as a sow’s internal reproductive organs.

  What was happening? Had my nemesis regretted being so harsh and crude with the pig’s uterus, and now decided to revert to milder items?

  I didn’t know.

  But I resolved there and then to increase my efforts to find out.

  I strode through the hall, calling out to Sallie that I was home, and ran upstairs to my study. Pulling towards me a sheet of vellum and reaching for my quill and ink, I set out to list all the medical practitioners – doctors and barber surgeons – in the immediate vicinity. I knew the names of quite a few of the latter, having been made aware of their presence (quite forcefully in some instances) on trying to become one of their number when I first came home. Whilst I could well believe that some of them – the raven-bearded shaven-headed giant with the ruddy cheeks and swaggering walk who haunted the Plymouth quays looking for patients off the ships, for instance – were more than capable of taking action against me, I thought it more likely that this would have taken the form of a direct confrontation, probably involving his fist and my nose. Besides, I wasn’t in competition with him, or with any of his fellow practitioners. They weren’t doctors.

  Still, I listed all the names I could recall. Then I went down to the kitchen to find Sallie and asked her if she could add any more.

  She looked at me, a calculating expression in her narrowed eyes. ‘Why do you want to know?’

  I hesitated. Should I explain? Might it alarm her, to know that I thought some disgruntled medical man resented my presence and was trying to scare me off? But then the doorstep offerings were well known to her – especially since it had been she who had cleared most of them up – so, in truth, she had a right to know.