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

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  Pilbeam’s heart was pounding. Every nerve strained toward the doors of the church and through the walls to the street outside. “Tell me what happened during your last hours on earth, Lady Robert.”

  “My last hours?” She dissolved and solidified again, wringing her frail hands. “I fell. I was walking down the stairs and I fell.”

  “Why did you fall, my lady?”

  “I was weak. I must have stumbled.”

  “Did someone push you?” Martin asked, and received the end of Pilbeam’s rod in his ribs.

  Amy’s voice wavered like a set of ill-tempered bagpipes. “I walked doubled over in pain. The stairs are narrow. I fell.”

  “Pain? You were ill?”

  “A spear through my heart and my head so heavy I could barely hold it erect.”

  A light flashed in the window, accompanied by a clash of weaponry. The night watch. Had someone seen the glow from the solitary lantern? Perhaps the watchmen were simply making their rounds and contemplating the virtues of bread and ale. Perhaps they were searching for miscreants.

  With one convulsive jerk of his scrawny limbs, Martin scooped the herbs, the charms, the candles, even the mite of charcoal back into the bag. He seized the book and cast it after the other items. Pilbeam had never seen him move with such speed and economy of action. “Stop,” he whispered urgently, “Give me the book, I have to . . .”

  Martin was already wiping away the charcoaled marks. Pilbeam brought his rod down on the lad’s arm, but it was too late. The circle was broken. A sickly-sweet breath of putrefaction made the candle gutter. The woman-shape, the ghost, the revenant, ripped itself into pennons of color and shadow. With an anguished moan those tatters of humanity streamed across the chancel and disappeared down the nave of the church.

  Pulling on the convenient handle of Martin’s ear, Pilbeam dragged the lad across the chancel. His hoarse whisper repeated a profane litany: “Earth-vexing dewberry, spongy rump-fed skainsmate, misbegotten tickle-brained whey-faced whoreson, you prevented me from laying the ghost back in its grave!”

  “Sorry, Master, ow, ow. . . .”

  The necromancer and his apprentice fled through the door of the sacristy and into the black alleys of Oxford.

  * * * * *

  Cumnor Place belonged not to Lord Robert Dudley but to one of his cronies. If Pilbeam ever wished to render his own wife out of sight and therefore out of mind, an isolated country house such as Cumnor, with its air of respectable disintegration, would serve very well. Save that his own wife’s wrath ran a close second to Lord Robert’s.

  What a shame that Amy Robsart’s meek spirit had proved to be of only middling assistance to Lord Robert’s—and therefore Pilbeam’s—quest. No, no hired bravo had broken Amy’s neck and arranged her body at the foot of the stairs. Nor had she hurled herself down those same stairs in a paroxysm of despair. Her death might indeed have been an accident.

  But how could he prove such a subtle accident? And worse, how could he report such ambiguous findings to Lord Robert? Of only one thing was Pilbeam certain: he was not going to inform his lordship that his wife’s ghost had been freed from its corporeal wrappings and carelessly not put back again.

  Shooting a malevolent glare at Martin, Pilbeam led the way into the courtyard of the house. Rain streaked the stones and timber of the facade. Windows turned a blind eye to the chill gray afternoon. The odors of smoke and offal hung in the air.

  A door opened, revealing a plump, pigeon-like woman wearing the simple garb of a servant. She greeted the visitors with, “What do you want?”

  “Good afternoon, Mistress. I am Dr. Erasmus Pilbeam, acting for Lord Robert Dudley.” He offered her a bow that was polite but not deferential.

  The woman’s suspicion eased into resignation. “Then come through, and warm yourselves by the fire. I am Mrs. Odingsells, the housekeeper.”

  “Thank you.”

  Within moments Pilbeam found himself seated in the kitchen, slurping hot cabbage soup and strong ale. Martin crouched in the rushes at his feet, gnawing on a crust of bread. On the opposite side of the fireplace a young woman mended a lady’s shift, her narrow face shadowed by her cap.

  Mrs. Odingsells answered Pilbeam’s question. “Yes, Lady Robert was in perfect health, if pale and worn, up until several days before she died. Then she turned sickly and peevish. Why, even Lettice there, her maid, could do nothing for her. Or with her, come to that.”

  Pilbeam looked over at the young woman and met a glance sharp as the needle she wielded.

  The housekeeper went on, “The day she died her ladyship sent the servants away to Abingdon Fair. I refused to go. It was a Sunday, no day for a gentlewoman to be out and about, sunshine or no.”

  “She sent everyone away?” Pilbeam repeated. “If she were ill, surely she would have needed an attendant.”

  “Ill? Ill-used, I should say. . . .” Remembering discretion, Mrs. Odingsells contented herself with, “If she sent the servants away, it was because she tired of their constantly offering food she would not eat and employments she had no wish to pursue. Why, I myself heard her praying to God to deliver her from desperation, not long before I heard her fall.”

  “She was desperate from illness? Or because her husband’s . . . duties were elsewhere?”

  “Desperate from her childlessness, perhaps, which would follow naturally upon Lord Robert’s absence.”

  So then, Amy’s spear through the heart was a symbolic one, the pain of a woman spurned. “Her ladyship was of a strange mind the day she died, it seems. Do you think she died by chance? Or by villainy, her own or someone else’s?”

  Again Pilbeam caught the icy stab of Lettice’s eyes.

  “She was a virtuous God-fearing gentlewoman, and alone when she fell,” Mrs. Odingsells returned indignantly, as though that were answer enough.

  It was not enough, however. If not for the testimony of Amy herself, Pilbeam would be thinking once again of self-murder. But then, his lordship himself had said, a fall down the stairs could no more be relied upon by a suicide than by a murderer.

  The housekeeper bent over the pot of fragrant soup. Pilbeam asked, “Could I see the exact staircase? Perhaps Lettice can show me, as your attention is upon your work.”

  “Lettice,” Mrs. Odingsells said, with a jerk of her head. “See to it.”

  Silently the maid put down her mending and started toward the door. Pilbeam swallowed the last of his soup and followed her. He did not realize Martin was following him until he stopped beside the fatal staircase and the lad walked into his rump. Pilbeam brushed him aside. “She was found here?”

  “Yes, master, so she was.” Now Lettice’s eyes were roaming up and down and sideways, avoiding his. “See how narrow the stair is, winding and worn at the turn. In the darkness . . .”

  “Darkness? Did she not die on a fair September afternoon?”

  “Yes, yes, but the house is in shadow. And her ladyship was of a strange mind that day, you said yourself, Master.”

  Behind Pilbeam, Martin muttered beneath his breath, “The lady was possessed, if you ask me.”

  “No one is asking you, clotpole,” Pilbeam told him.

  Lettice spun around. “Possessed? Why would you say such a thing? How . . . What is that?”

  “What?” Pilbeam followed the direction of her eyes. The direction of her entire body, which strained upward stiff as a hound at point.

  The ghost of Amy Robsart descended the steps, skirts rustling, dark eyes downcast, doubled in pain. Her frail hands were clasped to her breast. Her voice said, “Ah, woe. Woe.” And suddenly she collapsed, sliding down the last two steps to lie crumpled on the floor at Pilbeam’s feet, her headdress not at all disarranged.

  With great presence of mind, Pilbeam reached right and left, seizing Martin’s ear as he turned to flee and Lettice’s arm as she swooned.

  “Blimey,” said Martin, with feeling.

  Lettice was trembling, her breath coming in gasps. “I did not know what
they intended, as God is my witness, I did not know. . . .”

  The revenant dissolved and was gone. Pilbeam released Martin and turned his attention to Lettice. Her eyes were now dull as lead. “What have you done, girl?”

  “They gave me two angels. Two gold coins.”

  “Who?”

  “Two men. I do not know their names. They stopped me in the village, they gave me a parcel and bade me bring it here.”

  “A parcel for her ladyship?”

  “Not for anyone. They told me to hide it in the house was all.”

  Pilbeam’s heart started to sink. Then, as the full import of Lettice’s words blossomed in his mind, it reversed course and bounded upwards in a leap of relief. “Show me this parcel, you fool-born giglet. Make haste!”

  Lettice walked, her steps heavy, several paces down the hallway. There she knelt and shoved at a bit of paneling so worm-gnawed it looked like lace. It opened like a cupboard door. From the dark hole behind it she withdrew a parcel wrapped in paper and tied with twine.

  Pilbeam snatched it up and carried it to the nearest windowsill. “Watch her,” he ordered Martin.

  Martin said, “Do not move, you ruttish flax-wench.”

  Lettice remained on her knees, bowed beneath the magnitude of her defeat, and made no attempt to flee.

  Pilbeam eased the twine from the parcel and unwrapped the paper. It was fine parchment overwritten with spells and signs. Beneath the paper a length of silk enshrouded something long and hard. Martin leaned so close that he almost got Pilbeam’s elbow in his eye. Pilbeam shoved him aside.

  Inside the silk lay a wax doll, dressed in a fine gown with puffed sleeves and starched stomacher, a small headdress upon its tiny head. But this was no child’s toy. A long needle passed through its breast and exited from its back—Pilbeam’s fingertips darted away from the sharp point. The doll’s neck was encircled by a crimson thread, wound so tightly that it had almost cut off the head. A scrap of paper tucked into the doll’s bodice read: Amy.

  Again Pilbeam could hear the revenant’s voice: A spear through my heart and my head so heavy I could barely hold it erect. So the spear thrust through her chest had been both literal and symbolic. And Amy’s neck had been so weakened it needed only the slightest jolt to break it, such as a misstep on a staircase. A misstep easily made by the most healthy of persons, let alone a woman rendered infirm by forces both physical and emotional.

  It was much too late to say the incantations that would negate the death-spell. Swiftly Pilbeam re-wrapped the parcel. “Run to the kitchen and fetch Mrs. Odingsells,” he ordered Martin, and Martin ran.

  Lettice’s bleak eyes spilled tears down her sunken cheeks. “How can I redeem myself?”

  “By identifying the two men who gave you this cursed object.”

  “I do not know their names, master. I heard one call the other by the name of ‘Ned’ is all.”

  “Ned? If these men have knowledge of the magical sciences I should know . . .” She did not need to know his own occupation. “Describe them to me.”

  “One was tall and strong, his black hair and beard wild as a bear’s. The other was small, with a nose like an axe blade. He was the one named Ned.”

  Well then! Pilbeam did know them. They were not his colleagues but his competitors, Edward Cosyn, called Ned, and John Prestall. As Lord Robert had said, they were ill-nurtured cozeners, their loyalty suspect and their motives impure.

  Perhaps his lordship had himself bought the services of Prestall and Cosyn. If so, would he have admitted that he knew who they were? No. If he had brought about his wife’s death, he would have hidden his motives behind sorrow and grief rather than openly revealing his self-interest and self-regard.

  God be praised, thought Pilbeam, he had an answer for Lord Robert. He had found someone for his lordship to blame.

  At a step in the hall Pilbeam and Lettice looked around. But the step was not that of the apprentice or the housekeeper. Amy Robsart walked down the hallway, head drooping, shoulders bowed, wringing her hands.

  Lettice squeaked in terror and shrank against Pilbeam’s chest.

  With a sigh of cold, dank air, the ghost passed through them and went on its way down the hallway, leaving behind the soft thump of footsteps and the fragile voice wailing, “Ah woe. Woe.”

  * * * * *

  Pilbeam adjusted his robes and his cap. Beside him Martin tugged at his collar. Pilbeam jabbed the lad with his elbow and hissed, “Stand up straight, you lumpish ratsbane.”

  “Quiet, you fly-bitten foot-licker,” Lord Robert ordered.

  Heralds threw open the doors. Her Majesty the Queen strode into the chamber, a vision in brocade, lace, and jewels. But her garments seemed like so many rags beside the glorious sunrise glow of her fair skin and her russet hair.

  Lord Robert went gracefully down upon one knee, his upturned face filled with the adoration of a papist for a saint. Pilbeam dropped like a sack of grain, jerking Martin down as he went. The lad almost fumbled the pillow he carried, but his quick grab prevented the witching-doll from falling off the pillow and onto the floor.

  The Queen’s amber eyes crinkled at the corners, but her scarlet lips did not smile. “Robin, you roguish folly-fallen lewdster,” she said to Lord Robert, her voice melodious but not lacking an edge. “Why have you pleaded to wait upon us this morning?”

  “My agent, Dr. Pilbeam, who is apprenticed to your favorite, Dr. Dee, has discovered the truth behind my wife’s unfortunate death.”

  Robert did not say “untimely death”, Pilbeam noted. Then Her Majesty turned her eyes upon him, and his thoughts melted like a wax candle in their heat.

  “Dr. Pilbeam,” she said. “Explain.”

  He spoke to the broad planks of the floor, repeating the lines he had rehearsed before his lordship: Cumnor Place, the maidservant overcome by her guilt, the death-spell quickened by the doll, and behind it all the clumsy but devious hands of Prestall and Cosyn. No revenant figured in the tale, and certainly no magic circle in St. Mary’s, Oxford.

  On cue, Martin extended the pillow. Lord Robert offered it to the Queen. With a crook of her forefinger, she summoned a lady-in-waiting, who carried both pillow and doll away. “Burn it,” Elizabeth directed. And to her other attendants, “Leave us.” With a double thud the doors shut.

  Her Majesty flicked her pomander, bathing the men and the boy with the odor of violets and roses, as though she were a bishop dispensing the holy water of absolution. “You may stand.”

  Lord Robert rose as elegantly as he had knelt. With an undignified stagger, Pilbeam followed. Martin lurched into his side and Pilbeam batted him away.

  “Where are these evildoers now?” asked the Queen.

  “The maidservant is in Oxford gaol, Your Majesty,” Robert replied, “and the malicious cozeners in the Tower.”

  “And yet it seems as though this maid was merely foolish, not wicked, ill-used by men who tempted her with gold. You must surely have asked yourself, Robin, who in turn tempted these men.”

  “Someone who wished to destroy your trust in me, Your Majesty. To drive me from your presence. My enemy, and yours as well.”

  “Do you think so? What do you think, Dr. Pilbeam?”

  What he truly thought, Pilbeam dared not say. That perhaps Amy’s death was caused by someone who intended to play the Queen’s friend. Someone who wished Amy Robsart’s death to deliver Lord Robert Dudley to Elizabeth’s marriage bed, so that there she might engender heirs.

  Whilst some found Robert’s bloodline tainted, his father and grandfather both executed as traitors, still the Queen could do much worse in chosing her consort. One could say of Robert what was said of the Queen herself upon her accession, that he was of no mingled or Spanish blood but was born English here in England. Even if he was proud as a Spaniard. . . .

  Pilbeam looked into the Queen’s eyes, jewels faceted with a canny intelligence. Spain, he thought. The deadly enemy of Elizabeth and protestant England. The Spanish were infa
mous for their subtle plots.

  “B-b-begging your pardon, Your Majesty,” he stammered, “but I think his lordship is correct in one regard. His wife was murdered by your enemies. But they did not intend to drive him from your presence, not at all.”

  Robert’s glance at Pilbeam was not encouraging. Martin took a step back. But Pilbeam barely noticed, spellbound as he was by the Queen. “Ambassador Feria, who was lately recalled to Spain. Did he not frequently comment to his master, King Philip, on your, ah, attachment to Lord Robert?”

  Elizabeth nodded, one corner of her mouth tightening. She did not insult Pilbeam by pretending there had been no gossip about her attachment, just as she would not pretend she had no spies in the ambassador’s household. “He had the impudence to write six months ago that Lady Robert had a malady in one of her breasts and that I was only waiting for her to die to marry.”

  His lordship winced but had the wisdom to keep his own counsel.

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” said Pilbeam. “But how did Feria not only know of Lady Robert’s illness but of its exact nature, long before the disease began to manifest itself? Her own housekeeper says she began to suffer only a few days before she died. Did Feria himself set two cozeners known for their, er, mutable loyalties to inflict such a condition upon her?”

  “Feria was recently withdrawn and replaced by Bishop de Quadra,” murmured the Queen. “Perhaps he overstepped himself with his plot. Or perhaps he retired to Spain in triumph at its—no, not at its conclusion. For it has yet to be concluded.”

  Lord Robert could contain himself no longer. “But Your Majesty, this hasty-witted pillock speaks nonsense, why should Philip of Spain . . .”