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

by Alys Clare

  ‘Amen,’ I said. I didn’t think there was any need to check that life was extinct. If I was right and he was indeed a priest – I didn’t doubt it now – then he’d be more than capable of judging that himself. Besides, experienced in death as I was, I was pretty sure I’d just witnessed life leaving her. After a moment, I said, ‘What happened?’

  He raised his shoulders in an eloquent shrug. ‘I do not know. I was on the road and I heard her moaning in pain. I ran to help her, finding her lying on the ground and mortally wounded.’

  ‘And she had been hit on the head?’

  ‘Yes. She …’ He paused, apparently searching for the words. ‘She had fallen. That tree.’ He nodded to his right, towards one of the huge oaks that guard the end of the track up to the house; its pair stood opposite. It had a branch jutting out perhaps five or six feet off the ground. ‘She had a roll of …’ Again he paused, but this time, giving up, he indicated a pile of fine rope looped beside the track.

  She had been up a tree. With a rope. On the point, perhaps, of tying it right across my homebound path, at the height my neck would be as I rode my big horse. Having failed to kill me by tripping Hal and then hitting me, had she now resolved to try something more drastic? It looked like it.

  ‘Did she speak?’ I asked after a moment.

  ‘She tried, but her words made no sense.’

  ‘And she hit her head as she fell? On a stone, perhaps? A rock sticking out of the ground?’

  He shrugged. ‘I have not looked. It seems that is probably the case.’

  Now that he was speaking at greater length, I noticed that he had an accent. It put me in mind of the south … was it Spanish, perhaps?

  And I thought of Judyth’s foreigner.

  Judyth had described a mask of some sort, and a strange smell. The man standing before me, looking down with anguish-filled eyes at the dead girl lying at his feet, neither wore nor carried a mask, nor anything that might, in poor light, have been mistaken for one: a deep-brimmed hat pulled low over his face, for example. I breathed in through my nose, trying to see if I could detect an unusual smell. There was the sort of musty aroma that comes from garments too long worn, and an underlying smell of sweat. That was all.

  But the man was saying something, and I made myself pay attention. ‘… know who she is?’

  ‘I don’t, I’m afraid. At least, I don’t believe I do.’ I went to crouch once more beside the girl, studying her more closely. The rough-cut hair was reddish-brown, the dirty face freckled. Freckles …

  ‘We cannot leave her here,’ my companion was saying. ‘Is there a dwelling where she can be laid out?’

  I nodded up the track. ‘My house is nearby. I’ll take her there.’

  He stood watching me, frowning with concern. ‘Do you wish me to help?’

  I smiled. ‘No.’ I leaned closer. ‘I think it’s better if you go quietly on your way and we pretend we never met, don’t you?’

  His hooded eyes widened for an instant before he managed to control the reaction. ‘But I—’

  ‘I imagine you have come here to seek like-minded friends,’ I interrupted. ‘I’m hoping very much that you’re not planning to make trouble, because then I might regret what I’m doing. But I discovered you in an act of kindness, caring for that poor girl even though, kneeling out on the track as you were, you risked your own safety.’

  I wasn’t sure if he understood what I was trying to say. I wasn’t sure I understood myself. He looked at me for a long moment, then nodded. The next moment he had hitched up his long robe and was striding away.

  I picked up the girl – her body was skinny and light – and carried her up the track to the house, and Hal paced behind us. Inside one of the yard buildings I made a bier for her out of planks laid on trestles and carefully put her down on it, covering her with a length of cloth. Then I left her.

  At first light I roused Samuel and told him to take a message to my wounded farmer, William. He gave me a sharp look, then hurried away. I went back inside to break the news to Sallie that there was a body in the outhouse and advise her to work somewhere else for the time being.

  Samuel returned. He had delivered my message.

  I didn’t have long to wait. Black Carlotta arrived as the day progressed to mid-morning.

  I went down the track to greet her. ‘Thank you for coming.’

  She nodded. ‘Message said it was urgent.’

  ‘Yes. I very much wanted to find you. I reckoned you’d be a regular visitor to Katharine just now, so trying to contact you at the farm seemed a good idea.’

  ‘You reckoned right.’

  ‘She’s well?’

  ‘She is.’

  We had reached the yard. I led her to the little outhouse, indicating the body. ‘I believe,’ I said, ‘that you may know who this is.’

  She folded back the cloth and studied the still form. She made a small sound of distress, putting out a gentle hand to touch the smooth flesh of the face. Like the priest had done last night, she murmured some words, although I suspected hers were of yet another faith, and one considerably older than the priest’s or mine.

  Presently she replaced the cloth and stepped back. She strode out of the outhouse, and I followed.

  ‘Back of her skull’s stove in.’

  I nodded. ‘Yes. She tumbled from a tree and had the misfortune to hit the back of her head on a stone lying in the grass.’ I still had to check, but it was surely the only explanation. ‘You know her.’

  ‘Aye. Her name’s Gelyan Thorn.’

  My instinct had been right. Black Carlotta had sent me to Josiah Thorn to find out who had been behind the objects left on my doorstep, so it was only logical that the culprit must have some connection with him.

  But she’d been a relation.

  ‘His granddaughter?’

  ‘Aye. She was a wild child, that one. Josiah took her in when her father – Josiah’s boy – died ten years back. Her mother died having her, see, so once her father went she was all alone.’ She shook her head. ‘Josiah did his best but he never understood her. Mind, she was very strange in many ways – reckoned she could hear the trees and the flowers talking, and used to rescue dead animals and try to breathe life back into them. Josiah asked me to help, and I took the girl under my wing a bit, tried to encourage her out of her worst flights of fancy and get her to do something useful with herself, although I never made much of an impression.’ She smiled wryly. ‘Reckon Gelyan never even realized I was there much of the time, she was that wound up in whatever went on in that odd head of hers.’

  ‘Did she believe I was usurping her grandfather?’ I asked.

  ‘Probably. He’d have tried to tell her it wasn’t so, that he was pleased to retire and didn’t want any more patients, but once Gelyan made her mind up about something there weren’t no shifting her.’ She sighed.

  ‘You tried to steer me towards Josiah to help Gelyan, didn’t you?’ She looked at me. ‘You probably thought that once he knew what she was doing, he’d put a stop to the worst excesses of her behaviour. Such as leaving dog faeces on people’s doorsteps,’ I added ruefully.

  She sighed again. ‘I expect I did.’ She glanced back at the outhouse. ‘Not that it did any good.’

  ‘I’ll go and break the news to him,’ I said heavily.

  ‘Want me to come with you?’

  ‘No, I’ll manage.’

  She smiled thinly. ‘Used to breaking bad tidings, I’ll warrant.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘I’ll look in on him later,’ she said. Then she nodded at me, spun on her heel and strode away.

  Josiah Thorn’s grief at hearing of his granddaughter’s death was, it seemed to me, tinged with not a little relief. I sat him down, made him a hot, restorative drink and, as he blew on it and began to slurp it up, I waited to see if he wanted to talk.

  He did. He told me how his son had died, leaving him no option but to take in the orphaned little girl, even though he knew he was too
old – ‘and too selfish’ he admitted – for the challenge of a wayward child. He talked for some time, fell silent for a while, then said, ‘I know what she was up to regarding you, doctor. After you came to see me I took her to task, and she admitted it. No, she didn’t admit it, she boasted of it. She told me with great pleasure and pride how she’d left those revolting things for you to find and she listed them all, every last one’ – he repeated the list – ‘each time with the sole intention of driving you away. I’m sorry, doctor. I did my best with her, but the job was too hard.’

  Then he carefully put down his empty mug, dropped his face in his hands and wept.

  I stayed with him till his distress had turned to resignation, then I left him. Riding home, I reflected that the carefully repeated list of Gelyan’s offerings had not included the bloody heap of sow’s reproductive organs. Somebody else had left that.

  And he hadn’t mentioned the tying of trip ropes across my path. That, I guessed, was something she’d have kept to herself.

  I retired early that night, worn out by the day. I slept deeply for several hours but then woke in the profound pre-dawn darkness. There were two things nagging at me: first, I was feeling guilty about having let that priest walk away. What if he was even now housed with some local family of clandestine but determined Catholics? What if another traitorous plot was being hatched? What if he was no mere priest but a member of the powerfully intelligent Jesuit order; one of those brave men who risked a terrible death to come into this land to persuade men back to what they believed to be the one true faith?

  It was true that this particular danger had threatened most acutely while Mary, Queen of Scots was still alive, for she had been the rallying point for all those who wanted a Catholic back on the throne of England. During the 1570s and 80s the Jesuit missions had been relentless, only ceasing – or so we’d all hoped – when Mary was executed in February 1587. After the defeat of the Spanish the following year, the last years of Elizabeth’s reign had been tranquil; or so it had seemed.

  But now Elizabeth was dead. Mary’s son was now our king, and, for all that we were told James Stuart was staunchly Protestant, would there be factions convinced that an instinct towards his mother’s faith must lurk within him, only waiting for resurrection? If ever there was a time for the Jesuit menace to begin again, then surely, with Elizabeth dead and James yet to be crowned, it was now.

  After quite some time, I told myself it was no use worrying: I’d let the priest go, and that was that. I’d had a good enough reason at the time, so would have to be content to assume I’d do the same thing again.

  Then I turned my mind to the second matter.

  I’d been dreaming, I think – the images had been vague – of my Venetian doctor; the man who had told me about the plague and how they’d tried to combat it in his city. And in the dream he, or someone, had said lazaretto. It seemed as if my sleeping mind had merged the present – those papers of Nicolaus Quinlie’s – and the past: my plague doctor.

  I puzzled about it, trying to detect what the dream had been trying to tell me. If anything … Then, giving up on sleep, I lit a candle and quietly, on bare feet, walked along to my study. I closed the door, put the flame to a couple more candles, then went to the shelf where I keep my journals.

  I kept a private journal for the majority of my time at sea. The successive leather-bound volumes, filled with my handwriting, my sketches, my diagrams and even a few maps, numbered twenty-five and more. I kept a meticulous list of the patients I’d treated; of the new and experimental methods I’d read about, copied from others, been told of by strange medicine men in the far-flung reaches of the world and adopted for my own use. I noted carefully which ones worked, jotting down my observations of how they affected the patient. I wrote down everything, and I’d kept every single journal.

  It took a while to find the one I’d been using during that visit to the Dalmatian Islands, but eventually I held it in my hand. I went to my desk, sat down, pulled the candles close and began to flip through the pages.

  Presently I found, written in my own hand, what I’d been searching for.

  The Island of Korčula on the Dalmatian Coast

  (called by the Venetians Curzola),

  12th April 1594

  Today I fell into conversation with a plague doctor of Venice. He had much to tell me, the terrible disease having attacked his city the previous summer, not for the first time, and persisting in its malice well into the present year. It is a scourge straight out of hell, and the sufferings of the victims are harrowing: he described moaning, wailing, foul air filled with the stench of burning bodies; those yet living lie three or four to a bed, for on the plague islands overcrowding quickly becomes acute as the newly sick and the dying outnumber those already released into the mercy of death. I queried what he meant by plague islands, and he answered that many years ago the city had established upon Santa Maria di Nazareth, one of the islands in the lagoon, a quarantine station and hospital for those arriving by sea who are suspected of infection. This island in time became known as Lazaretto Vecchio, or the Old Plague Island, and, a few years later and driven by dire necessity, a second such island, Lazaretto Nuovo or New Plague Island, was also created. Thus in the present outbreak, the islands stand ready for use, although, as my colleague in medicine told me, already they are far, far too inadequate for the task that is asked of them and

  But I stopped reading then, for I had found what I sought.

  I managed to sleep, and woke as the early sunlight came softly into my room. Last night, when I’d made my great discovery, the elation had made me over-confident and I’d imagined flying out today and finding the answers to everything that had tormented me for so long. Now, in the practical light of the new day, I realized it wasn’t going to be so simple.

  For the last twenty-five years and more, Quinlie had made regular payments to one or both of the plague islands in Venice’s lagoon. Why, or for whom they had been intended, I had no idea. Was he another of the Old Catholics, appeasing his conscience as he bent the knee before this new version of God by sending support to some nun-or monk-run charitable foundation? For all I knew, any number of England’s resolute Catholics might be doing precisely that. Or not …

  I was finishing my porridge and wondering what to do with my new knowledge when Celia joined me. ‘You’re late this morning,’ she said, mild disapproval in her tone. ‘I breakfasted some time ago.’

  I was on the point of apologizing but stopped. This, after all, was my house. Within it, I decided, it was my business what time I rose.

  ‘Will you come over to Ferrars with me?’ Celia asked. Before I could reply, she went on, ‘Ruth came to see me. She has been very kindly keeping an eye on the house, going over most days, and she’d been there yesterday to fetch one or two personal items she’d only just remembered about. She says someone’s been there.’

  ‘Apart from us?’ I grinned.

  ‘This isn’t a joke, Gabe. Ruth is quite certain someone’s been searching through the house, and very recently too, because whatever it was that alerted her, she didn’t notice it the previous time she was there, and I need to see for myself.’

  It was the last thing I wanted to do. ‘But why? We’ve taken everything you wanted, haven’t we?’

  ‘That’s not the point,’ she said crushingly. ‘Ferrars might not belong to me any more’ – it never did, either to you or that scoundrel of a husband of yours, I wanted to say – ‘but nevertheless it was my home, and I still have a considerable attachment to it. The idea that some opportunist burglar has broken in and helped himself to items that once I treasured is very hard to bear.’ She gave me the look she’s been giving me since we were children: the one that says, Get the better of that!

  I didn’t think I could. ‘Very well,’ I said with a sigh. ‘But I can’t afford to take long over it.’

  Someone had been inside the house: Ruth was quite right. One small pane of a scullery window at the back
of the house had been broken, and the broken glass was perfectly situated for a hand to reach in and unfasten the catch. There was a suggestion of muddy boot prints leading into the kitchen. I followed my sister as she strode through the many rooms of the brash and vulgar house that had once been her home, waiting for her to speak.

  ‘It’s very odd,’ she said eventually. We were in her bedchamber. ‘I know someone’s been through the rooms – don’t ask me how I know, Gabe, I just do – and I think they’ve examined practically everything, but I can’t find anything missing.’

  I had crossed the room to throw back the hearth rug, and now I knelt down and levered the loose tile away. The hidden cavity gaped before me, just as empty as we’d left it. Had whoever searched the house been trying to find what Jeromy had hidden in there? There was no way of knowing, but I had a strong sense that was exactly what had happened. The question was, with Nicolaus Quinlie dead, who could it have been? Ruth had been going to Ferrars daily, or so it appeared, and she had only yesterday noticed the evidence of an intruder. Theo Davey had summoned me to Quinlie’s warehouse two days ago, which meant the intruder had broken in to Ferrars after Quinlie was killed.

  Who was it?

  I was finishing a late midday meal – Celia had gone back to her room and her sewing – when there was a knock at the door. Sallie hurried off to answer it – she believes it’s not proper for a doctor to be summoned personally to callers – and returned a few moments later accompanied by Jarman Hodge.

  ‘May I speak to you, doctor? In private,’ he added, shooting a glance at Sallie’s avid face.

  ‘Of course.’ I led the way out of the kitchen and across the hall to the library. Sallie, I guessed, thought Jarman was a patient come to consult the doctor on a medical matter, and there was no need for her to discover otherwise.

  ‘I’ve been back to Dartmouth,’ Jarman began as I closed the door. ‘In the wake of Quinlie’s death, see, I wondered if there was anything new to unearth.’

  I indicated one of the high-backed chairs set round the big table and he sat down. I settled beside him. ‘And was there?’