The constable, the justices, even the priests of Canterbury knew very well it was Lord William Torteval who so generously endowed their coffers. And very soon that responsibility would pass to Philomena.
Closing the shutters against spying eyes and prying ears, she wished she could just once get Lord William’s dimwitted servants to do her bidding without mucking things up.
She examined the throbbing knuckles of her right hand, resting upon the shutter. Beside her ruby ring, there was a tiny streak of blood. She licked her thumb and rubbed gently at it. Thank God, it wasn’t hers.
It was the blood of that simpering pig of a man who held the title of steward of Torteval Hall, the fool who’d once again dared to disappoint her.
She felt no remorse. He deserved her wrath. This was the second time Godfry had disappointed her in two days. Yesterday, he’d failed to ensure that Hubert Kabayn suffered on the gallows, squirming in agonizing death throes. He’d allowed the shire-reeve to show mercy to the murderer.
And today...
“I pray you, my lady,” he sobbed obsequiously, cradling his injured nose, “don’t send me away.”
She curled her lip. If he continued to cower in the corner, blubbering over his bloody nose like a wee lass, she’d show him what a real beating was.
Instead, exercising great self-control, she addressed him in a deceptively magnanimous voice. “Don’t be silly, Godfry. You’re Lord William’s oldest, most loyal servant.”
She crossed the solar at a leisurely pace, tapping her fingers along the immaculately polished Spanish oak table, plucking the strings of the small gilt harp perched there, pushing the silver chalice half-filled with claret back from the edge, finally stopping to stand over him like a hungry wolf over a wounded lamb.
Despite her best efforts to appear sweet, innocent, and charitable, Godfry trembled as she neared, his red face sweaty with strain.
She crouched so she could look him in his piggish eyes and spoke slowly, as if to a child. “As long as you do as you’re told, you’ll have a place in my house-, the Torteval household.”
He swallowed visibly.
“And what I’ve told you to do, dear Godfry, is find that key.”
“But my lady, I’ve looked high and low, and—“
She raised her fist again, and he cringed, covering his head with his arms.
Philomena clamped her teeth together hard enough to shatter them, willing her rage to subside. As much as she enjoyed the thrill of power that beating her father-in-law’s servants afforded her, it would serve little purpose.
Besides, she might break a nail.
When her calm was restored, she rose and turned away from him. “Go. Out of my sight.” He scrambled to comply with all haste. “And keep looking.”
When he was gone, when there was no more need to keep up appearances, dread overwhelmed her again and she half swooned, catching herself on the table’s edge.
Lord, what if she couldn’t find the key?
She’d been working on this plan for months. If something went awry now, when she was so close to her goal...
Blessed Mary, she needed a drink. She eyed the chalice of wine on the table and almost made the mistake of reaching for it. Withdrawing her hand, she erupted into giggles. That would have been a grave mistake indeed, she thought, and her laughter became near hysterical.
That chalice was for her father-in-law. She took him claret every night, to help him sleep. At least, that was what she told him. But even the soothing effects of the wine couldn’t dispel the sickness that gripped his bowels and made him weaker by the day.
When her laughter subsided, she reached again for the chalice, this time with no intention of drinking it. She swirled the liquid around the cup, marveling at what a perfect poison arsenic was. It had no color, no odor, no flavor. Even better, no one questioned her frequent purchases of the powder to kill rats, for she couldn’t keep a cat to do the task. Cats were unbearable to Philomena. They made her itch and sneeze and turned her eyes red.
Still, Lord William’s demise was taking much longer than she’d anticipated. He’d almost foiled her plans, suddenly summoning his lawyer to alter his will, giving everything to his nephew.
But fortune had smiled on her. The very night the lawyer arrived, a robber broke into Torteval Hall. While the unknowing thief ransacked the place, Philomena stabbed the lawyer to death and pinned the blame on the intruder. After the shire-reeve and his constable dragged the culprit and the corpse away, she’d simply tossed the new will into the fire with no one the wiser.
There remained but one problem. The key. Somehow in the chaos of the murder, it had gone missing.
She dug her fingernails into the waxy rim of the table. Without that key, she wouldn’t be able to unlock the cell. If she couldn’t unlock the cell...
She let out a shuddering sigh. It would do no good to panic. She hadn’t gotten this far in her ambitious twenty-four years by letting her nerves get the best of her.
She patted her sleek auburn hair into place and pinched her cheeks for color, then practiced a frown of compassionate concern as she started toward the door. Her poor father-in-law was growing steadily worse and worse, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.
Thank God.
“Not now, Azrael.”
With one hand, Nicholas picked the cat up from his lap and plopped him back down on the floor.
He’d had a miserable day. Indeed, he’d had several miserable days, starting with the day he’d hanged Hubert Kabayn. Since when had the shire become so overrun with criminals?
He’d had to put a boy in the stocks today, a lad as starved and bony as a broomstick. The wretch was fortunate he hadn’t been ordered to hang, for his crime was thievery, and in Kent, punishments were severe. The poor lad had managed to wolf down the loaf of bread before the baker caught him, thus destroying the evidence. The stocks were a warning.
Nicholas hated the stocks. It wasn’t that they were particularly distressing or painful, in and of themselves. But when a victim was thus displayed in the village square, the severity of his punishment was determined by the mercy or brutality of the populace at large. And in Nicholas’s experience, people were more likely to be cruel than kind.
He did his best to regulate what transpired by standing guard over the stocks, creating an ominous presence that discouraged more than the usual mischief of yelling insults and hurling garbage.
But he was still haunted by the memories of the times he’d let his guard slip. Once, a pack of three lads had stolen past him to cut off a man’s thumb. Another time, a sweet-faced maid had burned her sister’s bare feet with a candle. And the hurled stones...
Nicholas ran his thumb over the scar along his jaw. Standing watch over the stocks came with its risks.
No one had thrown anything today, but their taunts had cut the lad in the stocks to the quick, driving him to tears of humiliation.
Nicholas blew out a weighted breath. Some days he despised his position as shire-reeve. He was expected to uphold the law of the land, and he did so as honorably as he could. But there were days when he saw innocents punished while monsters walked free, and it wrenched at his gut that he could do nothing about it.
So now he drowned his guilt in ale, wishing he could set aside enough of his earnings to cover the taxes of all the starving peasants instead of only the most desperate. It was unconscionable to punish a hungry man for stealing a loaf of bread.
Azrael jumped up on his lap again, and this time he let the beast stay, idly petting his snowy fur while he purred.
“Snowflake,” he murmured.
It had been six days since Desirée had left his cottage with a self-assured swish of her skirts. Six days since he’d seen her fiery emerald eyes and luxurious hair and succulent, swearing lips. But it hadn’t been six days since he’d imagined her. The enchanting witch seemed to intrude upon his every thought, as distracting as the persistent itch of a bug bite.
Had she found
shelter? Food? Employment? Or would she be reduced to stealing bread like the lad he’d just punished?
Azrael growled as Nicholas unwittingly clenched his fingers in the cat’s fur. Nicholas released him, and the cat jumped down, crossing to the hearth with an indignant shiver.
Nicholas eyed the black cloak he’d tossed down beside his keg. Perhaps he’d seek out the lass and check on her condition. It was just the thing to get his mind off the bony lad with the tears streaming down his cheeks.
“Torteval Hall?” Desirée repeated as nonchalantly as possible, rubbing the pair of dice between her palms. Villagers pushed and shoved and sidled past her makeshift oak barrel gaming table along the narrow lane as she entertained her current pair of targets.
“Aye,” the player said proudly, giving her a wink. “I’m master of the mews there.”
“Indeed?” She cast the dice across the circular top of the barrel. Maybe her luck had just changed. This man might have just the information she needed to learn the truth about the murder.
Five and three.
“Zounds! I did it, Bardolph!” the man cried, elbowing his dour companion, who seemed impatient to leave. “I won again!”
Desirée sighed in feigned disappointment and slid the coins toward him. “Lady Luck is certainly with you today, sir.”
He beamed, showing off a gap-toothed row of teeth. “I’ll go again. A halfpenny this time, eh?”
She nodded, placing her coin beside his, but the fellow beside him grunted something in disapproval.
“Lady Philomena will wait,” the master of the mews said. “You heard what the wench said. Lady Luck is with me. Right?” He grinned at her with gleaming, greedy eyes.
“So ‘twould seem,” she agreed.
She shook the dice in her cupped hands, surreptitiously exchanging one of them for a weighted die from the purse at her waist.
It wasn’t a perfect system. One of the dice would still be completely unpredictable. But the other would always land on a one. The odds were in Desirée’s favor, for she knew that nothing higher than a seven could ever be thrown.
She added casually, “I hear Lady Luck was not at Torteval last week.”
“Mm?”
“Wasn’t there a murder at the place?”
“Oh, aye. Caught the bastard who did it, though, and strung him up. Nicholas Grimshaw himself gave him the final tweak. Did ye see it? Cracked the killer’s neck like a twig.”
Her grip faltered and she dropped the weighted die, quickly scooping it back up, but not before she earned a mistrustful frown from Bardolph. Her voice was hoarse as she asked, “What number, sir?”
“Eight again.”
“Very good. I’ll take...five.”
The dice clattered across the barrel. One and three.
“Damn!” The coins remained where they were. He squinted at the silver left in his purse. “Another penny?”
Desirée had to be frugal. She’d barely made enough coin in the last six days to pay for her keep, and that was living on one trencher of pottage a day. Still, she didn’t have much choice. She needed to keep the man playing if she wanted to find out more about the murder.
“All right. Five again.” She placed a halfpenny beside the others, then began shaking the dice in her hands once more. “’Twas a lawyer murdered, aye?”
“Aye. I’ll wager seven. ‘Twas the lord’s own man.”
“The lord?”
“Lord William.” The man moved closer to confide in a whisper, “He’s dyin’, ye know. Summoned his lawyer to write up his will.”
Bardolph jabbed him with an elbow, then skewered her with a glare. “Just cast the dice.”
She shrugged and released the cubes across the barrel. One and four. Thank God.
“Shite!” The man pounded his fist on the edge of the barrel.
Desirée couldn’t help the smile that teased at the corners of her mouth. Two pennies. She’d eat again tonight. Though a part of her mourned the loss of her longtime partner in crime, she didn’t miss having to turn over the greater portion of her winnings to the old lout. Hubert would have snatched that two-penny pork pasty right out of her mouth.
As she reached out to claim her take, her hand was suddenly covered by a massive paw.
“Leave it there.”
She whipped her head about. Who dared interfere in her game?
The master of the mews answered for her, removing his cap and breathing in awe, “Nicholas Grimshaw.”
Bardolph poked him, muttering, “I told ye we should’ve gone.”
Desirée wasn’t about to let go of her hard-won profit. She glared into the shire-reeve’s dark eyes. “What are you doing here?”
“Cleaning up the streets of Canterbury.”
The master of the mews twisted his cap in his hands. “We was playin’ an honest game o’ dice, m’lord. No mischief. I swear.”
“No mischief,” Bardolph assured him, adding for good measure, “and I wasn’t even playin’.”
“No mischief?” Nicholas intoned. “Then what’s this?”
Before she could stop him with her free hand, he yanked the purse from her waist and upended it over the table. What spilled out were a few farthings, four walnut shells, her silver Fast and Loose chain, a comb, the iron key Hubert had given her, two ribbons, a couple of dried peas, and the condemning unweighted die she’d exchanged, all she owned in the world.
“God’s hooks,” the master of the mews said in wonder. “’Tis a trick die.”
“She was cheatin’ us...ye,” Bardolph told him.
Desirée was more vexed than embarrassed. When you relied upon deception for a living, getting caught now and then was inevitable. A bit of smooth talking, a few coins slipped into the right palm, and a hasty departure usually served to get one out of such scrapes.
But she wasn’t ready to leave Canterbury. She had a task to finish. And she had no coin to spare on bribery. Lord, at the moment, she couldn’t have left if she wanted to. She couldn’t even remove her hand from the shire-reeve’s grip.
“How much did you lose to her?” he asked the men.
“Not much. Only the penny there,” the master of the mews said.
But Bardolph recognized opportunity when he saw it. “Two shillin’s!”
“What?” The first man frowned at him.
“Two shillin’s! She took two shillin’s from us...him.”
Desirée gasped. “I did not!”
“Two shillings,” the shire-reeve drawled. “Indeed?” He clucked his tongue. “Why, gentlemen, ’tis enough to have her flogged.”
CHAPTER 7
Desirée’s heart dropped to the pit of her stomach. Flogged? He couldn’t be serious.
“Bloody hell!” she hissed in disbelief. “‘Tis a penny! ‘Tisn’t as if I snatched a pound from the king’s coffers!”
Ignoring her, Nicholas told the men, “I’ll summon the constable to take her away.”
“Nay!” she cried. The passersby, though giving the shire-reeve a wide berth, turned their heads at her shriek, so she lowered her voice. “‘Tis barely coin enough for supper. And ‘twas won from willing participants in a game of chance.”
Nicholas paid her no heed but began scanning the square. “It shouldn’t take too long. I saw the constable a moment ago.”
Desirée turned to the men, imploring them, “Tell him. Tell him you were willing participants.”
The master of the mews only stared at her, confused.
“Of course,” Nicholas continued, “you two will have to stay to give the constable a full report and—”
“What?” Bardolph’s eyes widened. “Oh, nay, nay, nay, nay, nay,” he said in a rush. “We wouldn’t want to delay our progress home.” He kicked his cohort.
“Oh!” The master of the mews suddenly realized their humiliating predicament. If Lady Philomena discovered they’d been dawdling at the gaming table... “And we wouldn’t want to...trouble our mistress with such trivial matters.”
&n
bsp; “You’re sure?” Nicholas asked.
They both nodded enthusiastically.
Nicholas forced her hand over, and she was too stunned to resist when he collected the coins from her and handed them to the master of the mews.
She was still reeling when the men hastened away from the table. When she could catch her breath, she looked up at the lawman, incredulous. “Sweet Mary, you would’ve flogged me for a penny?”
“I just put a lad in the stocks for stealing a loaf of bread, wench!”
Nicholas had answered her with more venom than he’d intended, startling even the passersby with his harsh words. But he was still shaken by the sight of Desirée engaging in unlawful wagering in plain view of the citizens of Canterbury. If anyone else had chanced to notice the way she’d slipped that weighted die onto the table...
Shite! He should never have let her leave his cottage. He should have realized she’d end up resorting to crime. It was likely all she knew.
Calming himself, he tapped on the barrel top. “Is this all the coin you have?”
She pursed her lips defensively. “I would have had more if you hadn’t interfered.”
“Oh, aye. You could have used it to purchase a fresh whip for your flogging.”
She irritably collected her meager belongings from the top of the barrel and stuffed them back into her purse. “I’ve been doing this since I was a child. No one’s ever troubled me about it before.”
“Well, your luck is about to change. Where are your things?”
“What things?”
“Your clothing, your bedding, your...things.”
“You’re looking at all I own,” she sneered. “I had to sell everything to keep Hubert fed in your stinking gaol.”
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