The Angel in the Glass

by Alys Clare

  The words I was reading were bringing me such comfort that I paused to say a swift prayer of gratitude. It was as I’d remembered: for some reason, wrote the learned authority who had produced the text I was studying, the incidence of leprosy appeared to be declining. Hospitals dedicated solely to the care of lepers had been closing, or else changed into places where all and every sort of sickness and injury was treated. The learned authority speculated tentatively as to the reasons: perhaps, he suggested, people were dying from the many other more swift-acting diseases that were so common, such as the plague, before the slow development of leprosy had a chance to deform or kill them? Perhaps, even, the policy of isolation had been successful, so that new cases just weren’t occurring?

  His arguments were plausible, but I spent no more time on them. I had verified my original thought – that the incidence of leprosy had declined – and the next thing to do was to remind myself of the symptoms and, the relative rarity of the disease notwithstanding, determine if they fitted the dead man.

  After quite a long time, I closed my books with a sigh of relief and a long, luxurious stretch of my cramped muscles.

  Whatever had killed that slender, graceful and, perhaps, once beautiful man, it wasn’t leprosy.

  I almost set off straight away to tell Theo the good news and to reassure him that our isolation of the corpse had been unnecessary, but just in time I stopped. Perhaps it hadn’t been leprosy, but the possibility remained that something had infected him. Until I could work out what it was, celebration was premature.

  I sat down again and once more began trawling through my books.

  Celia had woken early – not quite as early as she’d planned – and wasted no time in going outside to pick the roses. They were as dewy-fresh as she had anticipated, and she took care in her selection, choosing colours that blended and, for fragrance, one or two more open blooms. She took them into the kitchen and, incorporating the foliage she’d also picked, made up a pleasing posy and put it in a jug of water to keep fresh.

  There was no sign of Gabriel. Observing that his black horse was also absent, she guessed he’d been called out. It happened with such frequency that she barely noted it. She flew back up the stairs – the bright morning had filled her with happiness – and set about selecting a gown that was suitable for visiting a man of the cloth.

  She knelt before the big clothes chest set against the wall of her bedchamber, picking up folds of different-coloured silk garments. She had so many: the one good memento of her marriage was the amount of fine silk in her possession, in the form both of garments and of bolts of cloth, for her late husband had been employed in the import of the gorgeous fabric. The very best of its kind, too, that came from Venice.

  Celia made her selection. Straightening up, she tightened her corset and stepped into the wide skirts of the gown, then pushed her arms into the tight-fitting bodice and laced it up. She had chosen for modesty rather than flamboyance, and the neck of the bodice came up to her collar bones. The silk was a soft lavender shade which she knew full well became her fair hair and sea-coloured eyes.

  She reproved herself silently for her vanity.

  Look where vanity and the love of fine raiment took me before, she told herself.

  There was a tap on the door and, after a brief pause, Sallie came in with fresh bread rolls, butter and preserve. ‘Off out, Miss Celia?’ she asked, smiling broadly. ‘That’s right, on such a fine morning!’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ Celia agreed. ‘Oh, is that your strawberry preserve? Delicious!’ She bent over the tray and, scooping up some butter and preserve onto the warm roll, stuffed in a large mouthful and began chewing. ‘Mmmm!’

  Sallie’s beaming smile intensified. ‘You eat up, my lass,’ she said approvingly, although it must have been evident Celia need no encouragement. ‘Build yourself up, my lovely,’ she added softly, watching Celia out of slightly misty eyes.

  Celia swallowed, then said, ‘I’m going visiting, Sallie, which is why I’ve put the posy of roses ready in your kitchen. May I also take a jar of this delicious preserve?’

  ‘Of course you may!’ Sallie exclaimed. ‘As much as you like – we’ve soft fruits aplenty and I can always make more.’

  She moved around the chamber for a few moments, straightening objects, tidying, picking up a discarded stocking, then nodded, bobbed a sketchy curtsy and left.

  Celia smiled. Sallie was one of the joys of living with Gabriel in his lovely house. Sallie had been Celia’s staunch supporter ever since her trouble the previous year, and sometimes Celia was all but certain that Sallie knew far more about the terrible events than she let on. She was kind, generous and loyal, and Celia knew that she and Gabriel were lucky to have her.

  Celia glanced back at the chest through which she’d lately been searching. Stowed away at the bottom, well out of sight of the casual glance, was the widely gathered, deeply frilled russet silk underskirt that she was making as a gift for Sallie. It was going to be a surprise – hence the hiding-away at the bottom of the chest – and Celia couldn’t wait to see the housekeeper’s expression when she was presented with it. It was a costly gift, and perhaps unsuitable, but Celia had made up her mind. If anybody deserved a luxurious gift, it was Sallie.

  Some time later, mounted on her grey mare, the roses and the preserve carefully tucked inside a soft cloth bag slung across her body, Celia was on her way to the village, and the small house beside the church where Jonathan Carew lived. She rode astride: her father and her late husband had both disapproved, and Celia had been forced to subterfuge. Gabriel, however, didn’t seem to mind. If he thought it was unstable for a lady to abandon the side saddle, he had the tact not to say so. Nor, Celia thought with a grin, had he objected when he discovered she’d appropriated the riding boots he’d loved so much when he was a boy. Well, they hadn’t fitted him for years, she reasoned, so why should he?

  She was aware that her mind was throwing up these thoughts to keep at bay her anxiety for, in truth, now that she was on her way, she was having doubts about the wisdom of her mission. Yes, it had been inspired by concern for a friend who might be suffering in some way, but now it occurred to her that if Jonathan had wanted to seek out someone to talk to, he’d have done so. Might have done so, in fact, and the person he’d selected someone other than Celia or her brother …

  Oh, dear, should she turn back?

  But she was already entering the little village of Tavy St Luke. There, right before her, was the church, and there the vicar’s house.

  With its inhabitant – oh, wouldn’t he just be? – standing in the doorway, calling out a greeting.

  Celia forced her stiff face into a smile and, kicking the mare to a trot, rode up to the gate.

  ‘Have you come to see me?’ Jonathan Carew asked, shading his eyes from the morning sun with a long-fingered hand as he looked up at her. ‘How very pleasant!’

  He came through the gate in the low fence, held out his arms to her as she slipped off the mare’s back, then took the reins and secured them to the post set beside the gate. There was a water trough next to the post and the mare, despite the fact that it was only a short ride from Rosewyke to the village, took the sort of advantage of it that suggested she’d been ridden hard for hours.

  Jonathan led the way up the brick path to his door. ‘I was about to take refreshment,’ he said over his shoulder, ‘so I hope you will join me, then you can tell me what I can do for you.’

  The Priest’s House was tiny. He indicated the pair of chairs set either side of the hearth, and she went to sit in the one that she guessed wasn’t his; the other had a small table beside it on which was a small leather-bound book, some sheets of vellum, a pen and an ink horn. Jonathan had gone across to what appeared to be the kitchen area, although, being little more than a series of shelves with a few mugs, platters and knives on them, it scarcely warranted the term. He reached down for a jug of ale, stored on the cool stone flags of the floor, and poured some into a pair of pewt
er mugs.

  ‘I’m interrupting you,’ Celia said as he handed her a mug and sat down. She nodded towards the vellum and the pen. ‘You were writing. A sermon, perhaps.’

  ‘I was attempting to, yes,’ he agreed. ‘Inspiration, however, is not forthcoming.’ He met her eyes, and she knew he was about to ask why she had come.

  He was pale. His green eyes were circled with darkness, as if he wasn’t sleeping, and there were shadows under his cheekbones that suggested he wasn’t eating either.

  She decided to speak first. She took a breath then spoke. ‘You said I was to tell you what you could do for me,’ she began, the words tumbling out too fast, ‘but actually it’s what I can do for you.’ His expression changed and for a moment he looked alarmed; hostile, even. She plunged on. ‘We – Gabe and I – wondered if something was troubling you on Sunday, and we – I – thought I’d call on you and bring you these.’ She reached inside the cloth bag and thrust the roses and the jar of preserves at him.

  There was a silence.

  She wished she was anywhere but in Jonathan Carew’s little house, facing his immobile face and his astonished disapproval.

  But then suddenly he smiled. He took the roses, raising them to his face and inhaling deeply. Then he took the strawberry preserve, instantly removing the piece of cloth that Sallie had carefully tied over the top and sticking in a finger, licking off the deep red jam with evident pleasure.

  ‘What a kind thought,’ he said warmly. ‘The roses are beautiful, and will brighten up this room. The preserve is delicious.’

  ‘I didn’t make it,’ Celia blurted out. ‘It’s Sallie’s special recipe – she’s our housekeeper. Oh, you probably know that.’

  ‘I do,’ he agreed gravely. ‘Please compliment her from me.’ His eyes were on hers again, and she couldn’t read the expression. She had the fleeting sense that there was something there, lurking just beneath the affability and the warmth; something disturbing. Something dark. As if he felt her sensing it, probing, assessing, he smiled again and said, ‘It might be somebody else’s work, but it was you who had the generous thought to bring it, and the roses, to me.’

  ‘As I said, Gabe and I thought you might be troubled. Unwell, even.’ He didn’t speak. ‘It was just that there was a moment when you seemed to freeze,’ she hurried on, not knowing how, having begun, to stop. ‘You stood there, and I saw your hands gripping the lectern as if it was the only thing holding you up.’

  The frightening silence fell again.

  Then, after what seemed to her a very long time, Jonathan sighed and said, ‘I hoped nobody had noticed.’

  ‘Gabe and I were close by, and Gabe’s a doctor,’ she replied.

  He nodded.

  ‘Are you ill?’ she whispered. ‘Is there anything we can do?’

  He came back from wherever his thoughts had taken him and now she sensed that his smile was true. ‘No,’ he said softly. Then – and she had the feeling he was finding it hard to say the words – ‘It is good of you to have come. To have braved the renowned reserve of your vicar and dared to ask such a personal question.’

  She felt the hot blood flush her face. ‘I’m sorry, sorry, I had no right to—’

  ‘Yes you did,’ he interrupted. ‘You had the right of a friend. Of someone who, observing what they believed to be another’s distress, was prompted to do what they could to assuage it.’ Before she could comment, he added, ‘Is that not what the scriptures tell us to do? What Our Lord would command to any of us who see a fellow human being suffering?’

  ‘Then you—’

  ‘Dear Mistress Celia, it was but a thing of a moment,’ he said very firmly. ‘I am most grateful for your solicitude, and for your gifts, but I must assure you that all is well.’

  I have to leave, she thought. He wants me to go, despite the kindly words.

  She rose to her feet. ‘I will pass on your compliments to Sallie,’ she said, stepping across to the door. ‘And now I must be on my way.’

  He walked up the path with her and gave her a leg-up onto the mare’s back. ‘My regards to your brother,’ he said pleasantly. Then, with a farewell wave, he turned and went inside his house.

  Gabriel was still not back when Celia returned to Rosewyke. She went inside, ate a bite or two of dinner, told Sallie how much the Reverend Carew had appreciated her preserve – ‘Aha, so that’s where you were off to!’ the gleam in Sallie’s eye seemed to say – and then, far too restless to spend the afternoon indoors, she rode out again.

  She let the mare amble aimlessly for a while, for she couldn’t think where to go. Her friends the wives of Jeromy’s colleagues were welcoming and she knew they wouldn’t turn her away, but there was something about their solicitude that was beginning to disturb her. It was as if they were saying, those generous-hearted women, You’ve been through sad times and, young, grieving widow that you are, we will do all we can to look after you.

  But Celia wasn’t grieving. She’d been through an experience that had almost finished her; it hadn’t. She had recovered, and sometimes – quite often, if she was honest – it was uncomfortable to be perceived as in need of care and comfort when she wasn’t.

  No. It wasn’t Phyllis, or Dorothie, or Jennet, or gossipy old Catryn – particularly not gossipy old Catryn – whose company she need now, when she was still feeling so raw from her morning’s experience; she’d felt both anxious and embarrassed at the same time, two emotions that, she had discovered, sat ill together.

  Then all at once she knew exactly who she did want to see.

  Turning the mare’s head and kicking her out of her lazy shuffle, Celia set off for the village of Blaxton, where the ferry crossed the Tavy, because nearby was the house of Judyth Penwarden. And, apart from being a midwife and a healer, Judyth was Celia’s friend and the holder of her closest secrets.

  THREE

  Theo was in the big room that served as his office and his agent Jarman Hodge stood before him, chewing away on a heel of bread.

  ‘Any idea who it is?’ Jarman asked.

  There was no need to ask what he was referring to. ‘Not the least one.’

  ‘Description?’

  ‘Male, fair-haired, filthy, diseased. Might have starved.’

  Jarman nodded. ‘Vagrant.’

  ‘Probably,’ Theo agreed. But even vagrants have a name, he wanted to add. This man had a name, once.

  Jarman was still in his office. Theo guessed he had something pertinent to say, otherwise he wouldn’t be.

  ‘Found where?’ he asked.

  ‘Up on the edge of the moor, quite some way from any dwelling currently inhabited.’

  ‘Elfordtown direction?’

  ‘Not far from there. Why?’

  Jarman shrugged. ‘It might be nothing, but I heard they’d had a spot of bother out at Wrenbeare. The big house, set up above Elfordtown, and no more than four, five miles from it, if you take the tracks over the moor.’

  ‘What happened, and when?’

  ‘I can’t swear to this, mind,’ Jarman warned. ‘I overheard it in the tavern on the road out to the moor, and it was quite late in the evening, but the man who was letting his tongue run away with him was saying how he’d joined in the chase after a skinny, ragged vagrant caught lurking around Wrenbeare. Word was the vagrant had tried to break in, or maybe he had broken in. Like I say, it was late, plenty of mugs of ale had been drunk, and it could just as well have been wild talk to impress the lassies serving the ale.’ He paused, his expression thoughtful. ‘As to when, I heard the talk about two weeks ago, maybe less, and the loudmouth seemed to be saying it had happened a few days before.’

  ‘And it wasn’t clear if this vagrant had actually broken in, or, if he had, whether anything was stolen?’

  Jarman Hodge shook his head.

  Theo thought for a few moments. The time probably fitted, if the assumption was made that, having failed to break in and steal food – probably what he’d been after – the vagrant slunk away to st
arve in that lonely hovel. How long did it take a man to starve? You needed water to go on living, Theo recalled being told – probably by Gabriel Taverner – but the body could go on for a surprisingly long time without food. As much as two and a half weeks? But then the vagrant might have had the remains of some paltry food supply, and only run out after—

  Jarman Hodge appeared to have tired of waiting. ‘Want me to see what I can find out, chief?’

  Theo came out of his reverie. ‘Why not?’

  He returned Jarman’s nod of farewell and, once the man had gone, went back to his thoughts. Vagrants were all too common, and there was nothing to say the one he and Gabe had just brought in was the same man who had been lurking about at Wrenbeare. If anyone had in fact been lurking. But he thought it was worth having his agent check.

  He knew better than to ask Jarman Hodge how he proposed to go about his task. The man was a highly efficient investigator, and Theo had had many an occasion to be grateful for his tact and his tenacity. But he had decided some time ago that it was better not to ask too many questions.

  I heard the sibilant hiss of silk, and Celia was beside me, perching on the edge of my desk and picking up one of my reference works.

  ‘Eugh!’ she said, her expression horrified. ‘Whatever was wrong with that poor soul?’ She was pointing at a drawing of a man with a hole in his face where the nose had once been. It was in one of the books I’d consulted earlier when I’d been so fearful that the corpse had suffered from leprosy.

  ‘The illustration shows one of the effects of leprosy,’ I admitted reluctantly. Before my sister could react, I hastily added, ‘It’s not pertinent to anyone I’m treating.’

  She whispered a swift prayer, then added, ‘Thank God for that.’ She slid off my desk and sat down in one of the pair of chairs beside the hearth. It was as if even the mention of the terrible word leprosy made her want to keep her distance.