The Muse and Other Stories of History, Mystery, and Myth

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  “What is the meaning of this?” Peter demanded, and again Wythe remonstrated.

  Slowly Anne raised her hand and set it against the glass, so limp and feeble that Tom had to push her fingertips down with his own. A moment later he had ascertained that the remaining marks upon the poisoned bottle were indeed those of her hands. Glancing up, he met Wythe’s solemn eyes, and received a nod of encouragement.

  “Facts are stubborn things,” Tom said. “The fact of who poured arsenicum in Robert’s wine is now revealed. Mrs. Peter Bracewell left the marks of her fingers upon the bottle. Her husband, intent upon his music, was never sensible of his wife’s brief absence from the room. Mrs. Robert Bracewell, intent upon hers, was never sensible of her sister-in-law’s brief presence in her house.”

  Eliza’s eyes darted to Anne’s bowed head, and her countenance suffused with understanding. Peter’s countenance went red. “You accuse my wife of murder?”

  “I do, yes,” said Tom. “Mrs. Bracewell no doubt intended Robert’s death to be thought a natural one. And so would it have been, had you and Mrs. Robert Bracewell not chosen to contest the estate. In time Mrs. Anne would have discovered an opportunity to destroy the dregs of the poisoned wine, and no one would ever have been the wiser.”

  “But, but,” stammered Peter. “Why?”

  “For the child.” Anne rose unsteadily to her feet, her complexion as pale as ash. Her hands rested upon the swelling of her belly. “I could not bear our child being born to less than the income he deserved, an income which his uncle permitted his own child but denied to ours. Now it is the child that I shall plead before the court...” She fell as a curtain falls when the hooks are torn away, folding to the floor.

  Eliza knelt over Anne and cradled her lolling head even as disgust wrote its lines across her features. Peter stared from Wythe to Tom and back again, as though they were capable of changing the situation in which he found himself.

  “I shall send for the sheriff and his constable,” said Wythe, his sober mien becoming grim. “I see no need, however, to conduct Mrs. Bracewell to the jail. She may stay in her own home until after the trial. Until after the delivery of the child.”

  Tom turned toward the window. Yes, all had been demonstrated. But he found little satisfaction in his demonstration. And yet his failure to solve the problem would have caused a different set of uncertainties to remain upon his mind.

  Against the darkness he could see only his own shape reflected imperfectly in the glass. He could still hear, though, the song of the mockingbird outside. So men, he said to himself, often imitate the finer sentiments, but defectively and with less pleasure to those nearby than the mockingbird mimics music.

  * * * * *

  Tom threw open his window upon the bright, soft, spring day. There were his little friends, perched amongst the new leaves of the tree just outside. Tom sang a few lines of “Barbara Allen” and first one, then the other mockingbird repeated them, heads tilted to the side, throats swelling, eyes shining like obsidian beads. When he completed his property at Monticello, Tom intended to populate it with mockingbirds in the most comfortable cages he could devise.

  He considered also that his new house was in need of a mistress. Indeed, he had only this morning copied into his commonplace book Milton’s lines celebrating the felicities of marriage, which, along with the joys of books, friends, and music, gave the lie to old Cicero and his dissatisfaction with living. Death came soon enough. Life was meant to be embraced.

  As was Mrs. Martha Skelton. . . . But it was a truth universally acknowledged that a widow in possession of a good fortune might not necessarily be in want of a new husband.

  He meant to convince Martha that he wanted her not for her fortune or her social position but for herself, just as he enjoyed the mockingbirds for themselves, and not because he intended to submit them to gravy or de Sequera’s delectable tomato sauce. He scattered a few dried berries on the windowsill, and laid out several long red hairs from his own head.

  In such a context he could not help but remember the Bracewells. Anne had come to trial and been found guilty of murder, but the sentence of the court had not been carried out by human hands. Just past the new year she’d died as so many women died, bringing new life into the world.

  Now Peter was courting another widow, this one with both children and fortune, who had expressed herself glad of Anne’s daughter. Eliza, on the other hand, had settled down with her middling income and declared her intentions never to remarry.

  One bird lit softly upon the sill and picked up a berry. The other seized upon the hair and flew away to build its nest, the task set before it by natural law. That same natural law that gave men the free will to covet and to murder. Or to do neither.

  Was it not simply reason no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions? Was it not simply reason that all men were created equal, and that a government existed for men, not men for government? It went against the law of nature that the laws for the citizens of Britain should be the just laws, and those for the citizens of the American colonies only imitations, more imperfect in equity and justice than any song repeated by a mockingbird.

  Tom leaned against the frame of the window and watched the mockingbirds weaving the long red strand amongst the twigs of its nest, building for the future.

  Author’s Note

  “A Mimicry of Mockingbirds” first appeared in White House Pet Detectives, edited by Carole Nelson Douglas, Cumberland House, 2002, and was reprinted in The World’s Finest Mystery and Crime Stories IV, edited by Ed Gorman and Martin H. Greenberg, Tor/Forge, 2003.

  Each writer in this anthology adopted a different president. Since I came to the project at the last minute, I was delighted to find that no one was doing Thomas Jefferson, one of my favorite historical characters. I’ve always been impressed not only by the breadth and depth of his thought and education, but by his facility with a quill pen—although my inspiration for the prose in this story is the almost contemporary Jane Austen, to whom I give a nod in the last scene.

  I discovered that Jefferson was intrigued by mockingbirds, a creature I’m quite familiar with, since I usually have several hanging around my back yard making a wide variety of comments. Working mockingbirds into the story was a bit of a task, but in the end, birds of several types play a part in solving the mystery.

  The anthology was originally titled Presidential Pet Detectives, which fits the first couple of stories better than White House Pet Detectives, since the White House wasn’t built until John Adams’ administration. But then, I take Jefferson in his younger days anyway, so the point is moot.

  I’ve spent many happy hours visiting Colonial Williamsburg and reading their excellent publications. Most of the people mentioned in the story, except for the victim and his family, are real people whose avatars you can meet if you visit there. Colonial Williamsburg is a must-see for people interested in history and even more so for people who are not!

  Cold as Fire

  Geoffrey knew only too well what happened to a bearer of bad news. Nevertheless, he had bad news to bear.

  The sergeant-at-arms spat sympathetically onto the mucky cobblestones before the castle gate. “So you’re off to tell the archbishop the sheriff’s arrested one of his men, eh?”

  “Yes,” Geoffrey replied.

  “The archbishop thinks his men are above the law of the land, I’m thinking.”

  “Whatever I’m thinking I know enough to keep to myself.” Geoffrey wrapped his cloak around his body as though it were armor and trudged down from the castle into the town.

  The towers of the cathedral looked like blunted swords against the frost-gray November sky, dominating the rooftops of Canterbury as its archbishop dominated the political squabbles of England. Whether Thomas of London was defending the honor of God or his own pride Geoffrey didn’t know and refused to guess. Posts as archiepiscopal clerks weren’t that easy to come by, but Geoffrey’s merchant father had found hi
m one, just as Gilbert Becket had done for his Thomas some twenty-odd years before. With discretion, Geoffrey could rise high. Not that he had ambitions toward an archbishopric.

  But then, Thomas had had no ambitions toward an archbishopric either. It was his friendship with King Henry which caused his swift if controversial rise in power, and his sudden transition—his sudden conversion—from secular to sacred.

  Geoffrey made his way along Castle Street, skirting the foulest of the puddles. Merchants flocked toward the well-dressed young man. Beggars called piteously. A woman brushed against him, her loosely-draped cloak affording him a glimpse of her wares. Normally he’d have gaped at her, but not today. Waving them away like flies, he walked on past the gate of the bishop’s palace, through the yard, beneath the portico, and into the great hall.

  The air was warm and close, filled with the scents of meats, peas, beans, bread. Smoke eddied between the carved beams which braced the ceiling. There was Thomas, just rising from his dinner. He was surrounded by clerks and scholars as usual and yet, as usual, stood aloof, set apart as much by height and bearing as by rank. His profile was sharp as a hunting bird’s and his golden-brown eyes as keen.

  Geoffrey shoved his way through the gathered men. “My lord, I bring news from the castle.”

  “Yes?”

  Geoffrey felt like a field mouse beneath that gaze. “Johanna Frelonde of Estursete, a tenant on your manor, has been found dead.”

  “Johanna,” Thomas repeated. “A widow. She paid five marks a year for the privilege of remaining single. Edward, find out whether she had children who will inherit and arrange a mass for her soul.”

  One of the other clerks nodded. Servants began to clear the tables. Geoffrey quickly seized half a loaf of bread.

  “Give the extra food to the poor,” the archbishop directed.

  Geoffrey, remembering the outstretched hands and empty eyes he’d ignored on Castle Street, put the bread back down. “There’s more, my lord. Johanna was murdered.”

  “Murdered? By whom?”

  “Some say by Father Baldwin de Lucy.”

  “What?”

  The word was so short and sharp Geoffrey fell back a step. Everyone else fell back two. “He and Johanna were heard arguing. Within the hour Wulfstan, the village smith, found Baldwin kneeling over her body.”

  “Where is Baldwin now?”

  “The sheriff had him taken to the castle, to be held there until the king’s justiciar arrives in two days time.”

  A gasp ran around the circle of men. Thomas’s face went hard and tight, but his eyes blazed. “Baldwin de Lucy is a priest. It is for us, his peers, to judge him, and if necessary punish him. He must not—he will not—be tried in a secular court.”

  It was for just such words and more that Henry had stripped Thomas of his secular honors last month, and the two former friends were now enemies. Was it fortune or choice, Geoffrey asked himself, that drew such a fine line between love and hate? “I just came from Baldwin, my lord. He—he’s not sensible. He’s babbling of Dies Irae, the day of wrath. Judgment day.”

  “He said nothing of Johanna?”

  “He muttered of witchcraft, of maleficium, and said Johanna will be consumed by fire for her sins.”

  “So shall we all,” muttered Prior Wibert from the edge of the group, “unless we beg for forgiveness.”

  “Baldwin’s gone mad,” Edward offered. “He’s been possessed by a demon. He can’t be held accountable.”

  Thomas’s mouth crooked upward. “Madness is in the definition, isn’t it? Perhaps it’s Johanna who was mad. And to dismiss Baldwin’s crime—if indeed he committed one—by saying it’s the work of madness is much too easy.”

  “I reminded Baldwin that he can take oath he’s innocent,” said Geoffrey. “But he refused, rambling on about innocence and guilt and how the two are different sides of the same coin.”

  “An oath, no matter who supports Baldwin when he makes it, might not be enough to satisfy the justiciar,” Wibert added.

  “Nor the king.” Thomas set his jaw and Geoffrey remembered he’d once been a warrior, too. “But we mustn’t sing the Magnificat at Matins. You, Geoffrey, find out whether Baldwin is indeed the murderer. If he is, well then, I shall deal with him. And the king’s justiciar.”

  “Me?” asked Geoffrey, and added belatedly, “Yes, my lord.” But the archbishop had already turned away.

  Men said that when Thomas of London was making his way up the social ladder, even when he’d reached the pinnacle of Chancellor of England, he was known for charm and grace. But now he was an archbishop, on Henry’s no doubt much-regretted whim, true, but an archbishop still. Now his charm was abrading to haughtiness. As Archbishop of Canterbury he no longer had to court his betters. He had no betters—save only God Himself.

  * * * * *

  A chill sprinkling of rain wetted Geoffrey’s head as he left the palace and turned toward the northwestern part of the town. Evening came on quickly this time of year, and with the thick, heavy clouds the night would be dark. But he already had reason to hurry.

  In the dim, dank interior of St. Peter’s church the candles standing to either side of the bier and its cloth-covered body seemed bright as bonfires. Beyond them the shadows were so thick that Geoffrey didn’t see the old woman crouching by a pillar until she moved and spoke. “You’ve come to see Johanna, have you?”

  “Oh—ah, yes, mother, I have. Geoffrey of Norwich, on the archbishop’s business.”

  “And I’m Edith, Johanna’s godmother.” The old woman shuffled forward and turned back the cloth. “There she is, then. Poor soul, I remember her as a lass gathering reeds by the Stour in the spring. Odd, isn’t it, how when you look back it always seems to be spring.”

  Geoffrey had so few years to look back on he had yet to assign them a season. He bent over Johanna Frelonde’s body.

  Even in the uncertain light it was horribly clear how she’d died. Her face was swollen, her tongue protruded from her lips, and all, face, tongue, lips, was the color of a winter storm, an evil purplish black.

  “She was a lovely lass,” murmured Edith. “You should have seen her on her wedding day, fresh as the flowers she wore in her hair.”

  It is the spirit that quickens, Geoffrey told himself sadly, and the flesh profits nothing. Grimacing, he pulled one of the candlesticks closer, so the light fell on her neck. Yes, Johanna’s skin was bruised and torn, all the way from the angle of her jaw down to the hollow in her throat. She must’ve fought, and fought hard, causing her murderer to lose and tighten his grip repeatedly.

  “She was a fine wife and a good mother to her son and her daughter, in happy times and sad as well.”

  “Of all things God has given for human use, nothing is more beautiful or better than a good woman.” Geoffrey bowed politely to the corpse. “But what of Father Baldwin? Do you think he killed her?”

  Edith’s dried-apple face wrinkled even more. “Baldwin says the words of the sacraments well enough, but I doubt if he listens as he speaks them.”

  Well, no, Baldwin’s kiss of peace had always tended to be a peck of condemnation. “He was—ah—said something about witchcraft.”

  “Witchcraft? Johanna could see beyond this world is all. So could her mother. She used her sight to help others. There was nothing in it that went against Holy Scripture.”

  But her sight must’ve discomforted the other villagers even so. Enough for one of them to kill her? Geoffrey lifted the cloth that covered the rest of Johanna’s body, hoping to find some clue.

  She’d been well into her years, but not yet old, and even in death looked strong and sturdy. Her hands were calloused, the nails cracked and broken off short. She’d labored long and hard, but then, as a widow she’d worked the land she inherited from her husband. . . . He looked closer. The nail on the forefinger of her right hand was a bit longer than the others, the end torn and dangling loose. She’d have taken the rest of it off herself, if she’d torn it in life.
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  And Geoffrey saw as clearly as he saw the body in front of him the pendulous cheeks of Baldwin de Lucy, hanging like empty saddlebags. On the left one was a raw red scratch extending from cheekbone to jawline—made perhaps by a fingernail whose owner had had no other defense.

  “Thank you, mother.” Geoffrey replaced the cloth over Johanna’s bloated and discolored face. He genuflected before the altar cross, hastened outside, and stood in the church porch exhaling the scent of mildew and candle wax, incense and death. His duty demanded that he find and tell the truth, but if Baldwin had done the murder, there would be hell to pay. Not only for Baldwin in the hereafter but for everyone in this life caught between the hammer of the archbishop and the anvil of the king. A day of wrath indeed. . . .

  The smith. The smith had discovered Baldwin bending over Johanna’s body, yes, but there had to be another explanation.

  Geoffrey plodded through the west gate in Canterbury’s encircling walls and across the bridge over the river Stour. Another spattering of rain pocked the dull pewter surface of the water. The roofs of Estursete were colorless lumps bunched between the willow-choked bank of the river and the gates of the archbishop’s manor house. A cow lowed mournfully. Geoffrey thought of the palace hall, a fire leaping in the fireplace and the table lined with trenchers, and his stomach rumbled.

  A sudden rhythmic clanging sent blackbirds whirling into the sky. Ah,

  Wulfstan Smith himself. Geoffrey ducked beneath the thatched eave of the smithy.

  Wulfstan’s fire was a sullen lump of red, barely warm. The man himself was short but broad, hair and beard bristling like a boar’s. He dipped an iron rod hissing and steaming into a bucket of water, then placed it in the fire. “What do you want?” he asked, his massive right hand tapping his hammer against his vast left palm.