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

by Alys Clare

  You wouldn’t have said that, would you, Henry Gillard? I thought.

  Jonathan had finished his sermon, and now we were all kneeling to pray.

  I folded my hands and shut my eyes.

  A sense of great serenity flowed through me. Was I forgiven, then, for what I’d done? Was Celia too, so calm and demure beside me? Or was it my distant forefather, telling me – and I could almost hear the robust Devon accents – that sometimes a man had no choice, and the important thing was to do what you had to and fulfil your duty and stand by those you loved.

  Behind my clasped hands I smiled. Whether it was God or Henry Gillard, someone seemed to be blessing me.

  I was quite content with that.

  POSTSCRIPT

  15 March 1604

  ‘Do you think,’ my sister whispered in my ear, ‘that’s Quinlie silk?’

  We both stared at the tall, broad-shouldered man riding sedately beneath a light canopy borne by twenty-four splendidly dressed men. He wore gold and cream, the silk smoothly luxurious and decorated with pearls. He was the calm centre of a vast sea of people that entirely covered the street: above, women and children leaned from casement windows in the buildings lining the route. Thousands of faces all turned his way, and the noise of the crowd was like a low, constant hum that rose to a new, fervent pitch of excitement as the man beneath the canopy drew level. Ten paces ahead of him rode a boy of about ten, the young face stiff with concentration. Behind rode a woman, surrounded by maids of honour and a group of about seventy ladies; the sheen of their brilliantly coloured gowns gleamed in the early spring sunshine.

  In solemn procession from the Tower to Westminster, preceded by his elder son and followed by his wife, King James was making his ceremonial entry into his capital.

  He had been crowned the previous July, but London was rotten with plague at the time and the occasion, from all accounts, little more than an observation of the necessary formalities that made James Stuart King of England. Since nobody was prepared to be in the city unless they had no choice, the elaborate festivities were postponed.

  Now the City of London was intent on making a day that would never be forgotten. Seven triumphal arches had been erected, seventy feet high and constructed from wood painted to look like stone; they were the brainchild of men of the theatre – highly skilled stage carpenters, scene builders, playwrights – who knew what they were about when it came to dramatic effect. A pageant had been prepared, in which brief performances were enacted at each of the seven arches in the form of allegories that honoured and flattered the new King and Queen.

  I smiled as I considered Celia’s question. She’d been joking but, when I stopped to think about it, the possibility that all that huge yardage of the best silk had come from Nicolaus Quinlie’s warehouses was quite likely. The late Queen, after all, had been a customer. And, as my late brother-in-law had been wont to say, Quinlie silk was the very best.

  We had found ourselves a prime spot on Cheapside, not far from one of the seven arches and at a slight elevation at the top of a flight of steps. As the procession stopped beneath us for the next instalment of the pageant, the King was close enough for us to study him.

  He had a look of melancholy, I thought, the long face marked by lines that led downwards. His eyes were hooded, their expression resigned. The light brown beard, masking the mouth and whatever expression it bore, neatly bisected the elaborate lace collar.

  The two halves of his body didn’t match very well. His broad upper body suggested strength, but his long legs were thin and feeble-looking. As if she read my thoughts, Celia leaned close and said softly, ‘They say he insists on thick padding under his garments, for he is terrified of being attacked and hopes so to foil the assassin’s blade.’

  Perhaps that explained the disparity between his powerful torso and his spindly legs.

  ‘Not much chance of that here,’ I whispered back. The royal party seemed to be lined six or seven people deep in servants, maids, guards and sundry other attendants. And, more crucially, the mood in the crowd was benign: Elizabeth’s long reign had given the country a taste for peace and prosperity and most people, if asked, would probably have said they didn’t as yet have much of an opinion of their new monarch but were very grateful that the handover of power had been accomplished so smoothly. It was extremely unlikely that any disturbance would occur today.

  ‘The Queen looks a little bored,’ Celia said in my ear. ‘They say she’s a frivolous woman not given to deep thought.’

  ‘She’s provided the King with two sons and a daughter,’ I whispered back. ‘That’s pretty much all a Queen is required to do.’

  Celia gave a slight shrug. ‘He’ll be back with his scintillating young men as soon as this is over,’ she remarked. She shot Queen Anne another scathing look. The Queen was suppressing a yawn. ‘I can’t say I blame him.’

  Celia and I were at the end of our time in London. We had been in the city for a month, throwing ourselves into the excitement fizzing through the air as preparations for the King’s official entry were finalized. I’d taken my sister to all the places I’d discovered when I was studying at the King’s College of Physicians – well, most of them anyway – and we’d been welcomed and made comfortable by the landlady of my old lodgings, who had provided us with two of her best rooms (clean sheets and tapestries on the wall) at what seemed a reasonable cost, considering the current pressure on accommodation for the King’s pageant. We’d worshipped at St Paul’s, we’d been up the river to stare at Hampton Court, we’d walked streets full of shops and the stalls of street vendors, we’d stood on quays and looked at ships newly arrived from far-flung ports all across the world. We’d gone to the Globe and seen A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where we’d joined in the cheerful laughter at hapless, self-important, enchanted Bottom in his ass’s head and Celia had fallen instantly in love with the handsome man playing Theseus.

  I sensed that this trip to London marked the final stage in my sister’s recovery. While I didn’t underestimate her suffering, I observed in her a strong resilience; I recognized it because I possessed it myself. In that, we were very similar. Like me, she had the ability to face what had happened – what she had done – and, while not proud of some of her actions, console herself with the thought that, given the same circumstances again, she would do precisely what she’d done the last time. She had made peace with herself, and, more crucially, with God.

  Or so I hoped.

  It gave me pleasure to watch her absorbing the sights, smells and unique ways of the capital. She’d been amazed, at first; wide-eyed at the massed spires of the city’s twenty-five churches; at the dense thicket of chimneys belching the smoke of a thousand hearths into the sky; at the great lumbering wagons arriving daily to feed the various needs of half a million people and trundling away to bear away the products of London industry to the rest of the country; at acres of bed linen spread out on the grass by the laundresses; at the nauseainducing stench of the tanneries; at the unimaginable gulf between the rich of the Strand and Holborn and the poor, clinging on to precarious existence in the filthy, overcrowded squalor of the cheaply built tenements up to their ankles in the foul waters of the Fleet Ditch. She had bravely ventured south of the river – and not just to visit the Globe theatre – and felt the dark underside of the city in areas such as Southwark and Bermondsey; haunts of cutpurses, tricksters and worse. She had wandered past bowling alleys and bear-baiting pits, she had seen taverns and brothels, drunkenness and lewd behaviour; men vomiting in the gutter and whores with bodices so low-cut that their breasts were on display.

  And she loved every moment. I found myself watching with amazement as my gently reared sister threw herself into exploring the vibrant, dirty, befouled, fascinating city, for a greater contrast to the life of a prosperous farmer’s daughter in rural Devon could hardly be imagined. But then I remembered what she’d been through. What she’d done. And I realized, once again, that there was more to Celia than met the
eye.

  I had left her resting in our rooms the morning after our visit to the Globe to meet my fellow members of the Symposium, our proposed meeting the previous summer having been cancelled, like the celebrations for the new King, because of the plague. I presented my paper expressing my doubts over the universal benefits of blood-letting, to the predictably raucous reception: in summary, disbelief, mockery and the suggestion that I stop being so arrogant and thinking I knew better than a thousand years of medical experience.

  But I didn’t let my friends change my mind. I had a long way to go with my research, my experiments and my observations, but I knew I was right.

  It was time to go home. Celia and I had loved our time in London, and we had made a firm resolve – solemnized by raising our glasses of good French wine on our last night – to return. Celia’s eyes were now open to what the rest of the world had to offer, and, as she remarked, our life in the Devon countryside seemed rather small by comparison.

  Nevertheless, as we set out for home, both of us felt a lift of the heart.

  In the course of our long journey, I had plenty of time to think ahead. Celia had intimated that she’d quite like to make her home with me, although she was still considering my parents’ offer of her own quarters at Fernycombe. Since Jeromy’s death, she had been dividing her time between the two households. Being my sister, she had somehow contrived to make it sound as if accepting my offer would mean she was graciously granting me a very great favour. But I didn’t mind; quite the opposite, really. I had liked having her live under my roof even during the awful time just after Jeromy’s death; I reckoned I’d like it a great deal more now, when my sister was restored to herself. If, that was, she decided to do so …

  We were returning to a small but pleasant social network. Celia has a little group of her own, for the kind-hearted women who had supported her after Jeromy died – those wives of his business acquaintances – had not melted away once Celia was over the first shock. A few of them have become true friends, and quite often I return home after a long day to find Rosewyke full of the light-hearted voices of women, sweeping up and down the stairs with a swish of silk, little heels tapping on the floorboards, sounds of laughter and good-hearted teasing echoing to the roof. Sallie, red-faced and shiny-cheeked, is in her element, for the feminine touch she had yearned for was now present.

  Perhaps a little too present, for me, but I am learning to cope.

  In addition, Celia and I have shared friends: Jonathan Carew is a regular visitor, coming once a week or so to dine with us, and we now attend his services as a matter of course. With my sister and me he is ever the urbane, courteous and amusing man of the cloth, keeping the conversation light-hearted and frequently making us laugh. It would be forgivable to imagine this was all there was to him, but I don’t believe it. Apart from the impression I gained when I first met him, I have now experienced other moments that invoke my interest: quite often after dinner, Celia retires to bed and leaves Jonathan and me to finish our brandy. Then occasionally – not often, for he is careful – he says something that makes me think all over again, Who are you really, Jonathan Carew? What is your story?

  I look forward, although without a lot of hope, to finding out.

  Our other good friends are Theophilus Davey and his wife Elaine. Theo, I am relieved to realize, seems to have forgiven me for not revealing the whole truth about Jeromy’s death. Or perhaps forgiven is the wrong word; more likely, he appreciates that he is never going to find out anything more (not from me, anyway) and has sensibly decided that it isn’t worth losing a friend purely in order to make a point.

  I like to hope so, anyway, for I have become very fond of Theo.

  Sometimes he and Elaine bring all three children out to Rosewyke for the day, for the elder two adore playing in the yard, the vegetable patch, the orchard and down the path towards the river, and poor Flynn doesn’t get a moment’s peace from the instant Carolus and Isabella arrive till they are dragged, protesting, away. The youngest, Benjamin, is overawed by the wide spaces of Rosewyke and prefers to seek out Celia and hold on to her skirts while his elder siblings tear about. I’d wondered, given Celia’s recent history, how she would be affected by a small (and very loveable) boy intent on making her his friend. Happily, she seems to appreciate it. She is, I like to think, healing.

  Slowly and steadily our journey passed.

  Our progress wasn’t fast, for, although the weather was good – cold but fine – the days were still relatively short, and there was no need to go on after dusk fell. As a consequence, it took over a fortnight and, by the time we turned into the track up to Rosewyke, we were very glad to be home.

  Samuel and Tock came out to take our horses and give them the attention they had earned. Flynn rushed out to lick hands, faces, necks and anything else he could reach. Inside the house, Sallie greeted us peremptorily and instantly rushed off to prepare hot food, mulled ale, a cauldron of near-boiling water with which to wash off the dirt of travel and – luxury of luxury – clean clothes.

  Finally, fed, washed, clothed and in all ways restored, Celia and I were sitting either side of the fire in the library. Full darkness had fallen, and the room was softly lit by candles and the flames. We were drinking the last of the spiced ale. Neither of us had spoken for some time, and I sensed she, like me, was sleepy and thinking of bed.

  But I had to ask.

  ‘So,’ I said in what I thought a suitably casual tone, as if I didn’t much care one way or the other, ‘what have you decided?’

  ‘About more ale? No thanks, Gabe, I’ve had enough.’

  While it was true I’d half-heartedly offered to get up and fetch more, that wasn’t what I meant and she knew it. I decided not to rise to her bait and merely waited.

  After a while, she just said, ‘Yes. I will.’

  Silence fell again. I’d imagined it was all she was going to say. It was enough, for I understood and neither of us have ever been great ones for shows of emotion.

  But then, so softly that I almost missed it, she added, ‘Thank you.’