“Indeed I am,” snorted Sir Walter. “Trying to get anything personal out of you is like squeezing a chicken bone and trying to get gravy juices. But you think you’re so damned clever worriting out secrets. Well, I’m not a fool either, my boy. Dealing with our mighty monarch for a few years can make you very wary, as I’m damned sure you know. And I can do a little worriting and weaselling myself. You like the girl. Go on, deny it?”
“I believe I have, occasionally, admitted even to liking you, sir.” Richard walked with his father to the front doors. “Though I have no idea why.”
“Think yourself lucky, boy. You could have Cromwell. You could have had that self-aggrandising Thomas More, the fool. You might even have had the last king, who shivered the legs of anyone with any heart in them.” Sir Walter nodded back to the opposite doorway. “Me, I’m an easy living soul with little more desire than to keep my head on my shoulders.”
“A reasonable desire, sir.”
“Never noticed you caring even about that,” replied Sir Walter. “But you talk about this Jemima girl in a way I’ve not heard from you before.” He poked his nose out into the pale October sunlight, and breathed in deeply. “So why don’t you even share dinner with those females? You feed them, don’t you?”
“Do they look starving to you, sir?” Richard walked down onto the paved steps beyond the front door. “They eat in the small hall, and I eat either when I am out on business, or in my bedchamber. Social chatter does not amuse me.”
Sir Walter followed his shadow out onto the path leading to the stables. The page had already been sent to the head groomsman to order Sir Walter’s horse saddled and brought around. The sun was low now, and slipping into a late autumn twilight. “The next time I come,” Sir Walter said, “I shall bring Peter with me. You may not like social chatter, my boy, but I do and so does she. Nor do we often get the opportunity to gossip with whores. It’s a delightful frivolity.”
“Not exactly whores, sir.”
“Not far off it.” Sir Walter put his foot to the stirrup, but paused. “I’ve invited the elegant one in white to join me at the January joust. Am I crazed, do you think? Courageous. Or just love the idea of shocking all those prissy courtiers?” Richard blinked and Sir Walter laughed. “Good merciful heavens, boy,” he said. “I’ve surprised you. Now that’s an achievement in itself.”
“Surprise, indeed,” Richard answered him. “Mistress Alba is not the woman I’d have expected would appeal – but no matter. Your business is your own, sir. I shall not be accompanying you.”
“Oh yes you will, my lad,” grinned Sir Walter, “because I’ve invited your little Jemima as well.”
November turned cold and the fires were lit all across London and Westminster, chimney shrugging out their great plumes of aromatic wood smoke and the wafting black smut of coal dust.
The trees around Wolfdon Hall had spun their sunset colours and were now losing their foliage. Stark dark branches poked bare from the last crinkled brown leaves. Shadows were longer, the woodland creatures had crept into hibernation, and the winds were sharp. But inside, the chambers were warm and lit with dancing flames as the heat gusted up the brick flues with a roar and the draught whistled down, meeting in small storms half way up the chimney breasts.
The bedchambers shilled, but small fires were lit in the hearths and the beds were warmed with hot bricks. Hippocras was served, bubbling with spicy warmth. Additional blankets were brought up from the store cupboards, and mattresses were turned, first propped before the fires to cast out damp.
The women pulled their chairs closer to the hearth, and drank a little more, ate a little more, and went earlier to bed. But they were getting bored.
“After Epiphany,” said Ruth softly, gazing into the stories of flame and shadow at the back of the fire, “I might go home. I know I’m not wanted here. And if I’m not careful my own little cottage will fall to ruin in the winter winds.”
“And leave this free food and free heat?” Philippa stared. “What madness. I’ve never eaten so well. I live in a tenement and sleep badly for the draughts and the noises from the family above tramping across their floor. I’d barely afford faggots for a fire of any size and my hearth is less than a quarter the size of this great blaze. As long as I can stay here, I don’t care whether my nasty little hole collapses or not.”
Ruth stared. “My home is mine. It may be small and it may be leased, but it’s mine. I don’t care to live on another arrogant bastard’s charity, when he's free to throw me out whenever he chooses.”
“My dear friends,” Elisabeth raised her voice, “there’s no need to squabble, happy as we are – ”
“But it’s an insult,” Ruth insisted. “We’re treated as little dead bodies ourselves. Ignored. Despised.”
“Well fed,” Elisabeth insisted. “You don’t feed the dead. Not sugars, and spices and roast duck as moist as a custard.”
“Nor plied with the very best Burgundy, finer even than Edward ever supplied.”
Penelope, usually silent, now looked up, white faced. “I was so poor after dearest Edward, I could have starved. I don’t blame him for casting me over, all men tire of their women in time, I think. But he went sailing and forgot about me. I never got the pension he paid to some of you others. So I had to get a job. It was work I hated. I won’t go back to it. Coming here saved my life all over again.”
Ysabel stared. “The streets? A brothel?”
“I’ll mind my business,” Penelope said under her breath, “and you mind yours.”
“I won’t argue.” Ysabel cuddled up closer to Jemima, two cushions by the fire. “I’ve never been happier, except in Edward’s arms. And yes, my dearest paid me a small pension after our parting, but he rarely remembered to pay it. Dickon the Bastard will have to throw me bodily from the house before I leave.”
Elisabeth shook her head. “I adore it here. But he doesn’t want us. He’s never tried to kiss me. He never even smiles.”
Alba stared at Elisabeth. “You think every man should be carrying you off to bed?”
“Why not?” Elisabeth looked back into her lap. “I like being kissed. I like being fucked.”
Alba arched her eyebrows and stared down at the blushing Elisabeth. “Vulgar girl. This Richard Wolfdon has many faults, but he is not a vulgar creature. And let me tell you,” she looked around, “as Edward’s first and principal lover, I would expect to have received the larger pension. He certainly never forgot to pay. I would have expected no less. He did not forget his beautiful swan.”
“Oh, pooh,” said Ruth under her breath.
Jemima interrupted, “I need a new bedrobe. Mine is shabby and faded. I’m embarrassed to be seen in it. The hem is unravelling and it barely covers me. I know my nipples show through. But I’ve not a penny. Yes, I eat and I drink and I sleep like a well wrapped baby. But I have no way to earn my keep or spend as I need to. And I feel like a slut and a street pauper kept in a style I haven’t deserved.”
“Then deserve it, my love,” smiled Ysabel, spreading her skirts. “Bed the man.”
“I wouldn’t know how to,” Jemima mumbled.
“Borrow my bedrobe as you did before, little dove,” Alba said at once. “I’ve little care for such things. Perhaps I should give it to you.”
“And,” said Ruth, raising her voice, “we came here for a reason. To discover who those poor little corpses were, and what happened to them. Is there a murderer amongst the servants. Amongst Edward’s friends? Does wretched Richard Wolfdon care anymore? Does he even think about that investigation he was going to make with us helping from start to glorious finish? What happened to the purpose of everything?”
“Oh dear.” Ysabel poked her toes from her skirts again, wriggling them before the flames. “Do we care anymore?”
“I care.”
Elisabeth blinked, moist eyed. When we first moved here, I thought it was for a week or two. Now it’s nearly the Christmas season and you talk of Epiphany. That gran
d Sir Walter invited you Alba, to a joust in late January. People seem to think we’ll be here for a year. Well, good. I’ll stay as long as I’m allowed.”
Philippa pouted, staring back at Ruth. “Don’t spoil it for the rest of us. I’ve not worked the streets yet, but put me back into that cold little hovel, and I may have to.”
“We’re squabbling again,” sighed Elisabeth. “It’s been so nice and friendly all this time. We mustn’t get cross. When I was a little girl, all I remember was Maman and Papa fighting and him hitting her so she fell into the fire. I hate thinking about that.” She turned slightly pink and stared into her lap again. “It was so nice when Sir Walter came to visit. A real lord. And then Peter, who is so sweet and still boyish. And they’ve promised to come back over Christmas, both of them together, and perhaps even escort us to a mumming in the Westminster square, or a miracle play outside St. Paul’s.”
Alba stretched. “The Christmas season hasn’t yet started. And I’m not leaving here until after that grand joust at Greenwich – not unless our invisible host chases me out.”
Ruth stood, frowning, looking down at the bodies comfortably stretched on the cushions, or cuddled by the fire. “So who,” Ruth demanded, “agrees with me about leaving? Who has the pride to live their own life? And who wants to stay forever, like a pauper begging from the table of the lord? So come on. Does anyone of you retain some pride? Tell me, who wants to leave?”
Penelope looked up with a small sniff. “Is that how you spoke to dearest Edward? Did you threaten to walk out, or did you accept his generosity like the rest of us?”
Ruth strode to the window, turning her back and raising her voice. “I loved Edward. He loved me. We shared – a bed. That’s different.”
Katherine, who sat a little distant, murmured, “Is poverty so sweet? Is comfort so wicked?” But was not answered.
The other women looked away, gazing silently into the dancing flames or into their laps. Philippa’s eyes were tear filled, but she did not speak and stared instead at the polished boards. Not one woman nodded or raised her hand.
Finally Elisabeth walked over to where Ruth stood, watching the rain through the long window. “Dearest Ruth, come back and be warm,” she said softly. “No one wants to leave, you know.”
“Definitely and absolutely not,” muttered Penelope, sitting cross-legged on the largest cushion. “I’ve no pretence at pride. No one beats me here. They feed me instead and ask nothing of me. And when the time comes, I want to help clear Edward’s name.”
“We insist you stay, my dear,” Alba clapped her hands as though summoning accord. “One day our host will need us. His investigation, whether he informs us of his movements or not, must surely be going ahead or he would not continue to extend his hospitality.”
Jemima, curled comfortably on her tussock with the flames reflected in her half closed eyes, didn’t bother answering.
Chapter Eleven
On a slab of unpolished stone, the three lifeless bodies still lay.
They were greatly distorted, too often touched and turned, prodded and fingered. The back chamber of the sheriff’s offices was not a private place. Three little naked bodies had brought many interested visitors and not all had as genuine a business there as they first claimed.
Unheated, the small room was low ceilinged and the beams forced Richard to bend his head as he looked down, hands behind his back, eyes narrowed.
Lying side by side, the central figure had once, perhaps, been the tallest. Her legs were long and slim, but now they were wrinkled and twisted, the knees bent with one foot hanging broken and loose from its ankles. Her face was wizened, as if she had been old before she died, but her nakedness and her murder told of her youth. Scraps of pale hair still attached to her scalp, and her arms were crossed over her flattened breasts.
The figure lying to her right was smaller. She might have been little more than a child as her legs were shorter, and being plumper, still held more shape. Although the mummification of her flesh was as severe as the others, her belly still appeared rounded, her breasts remained curved around their dark nipples and her face seemed almost round. There was a hint of the prettiness she would once have enjoyed, although her jaw hung hollow where her teeth had fallen and her gums had rotted away. To the left, the last corpse was the most contorted. Its arms flared out, each finger twisted as though in pain. Her belly, breasts and thighs had lost all shape and all beauty was gone. Her nose had been lost as if eaten away by time and her tiny ear lobes were glued to her cheeks, but long streaks of dark hair still covered her head and shoulders.
Their nakedness was not alluring, although many of the sheriff’s visitors had sniggered, and surreptitiously poked. The dead girls, however, now seemed horribly insulted by death, and all their youth and beauty stolen from them.
“They were young, all of them,” said Thomas Dunn. He stood, hands to the edge of the stone slab, staring down. “I’d guess at between fifteen and twenty. Not that I’ve seen many corpses, and certainly not so preserved nor long buried. Poor little creatures. The closed warmth kept their flesh on their bones, but as skeletons they’d have seemed more attractive.”
“I had not considered their present attractions, or lack of such, to be of primary importance,” considered his companion. “But no doubt you know best, Tom.”
“Well, I’ve studied enough to know, so I know this,” Thomas frowned. “They were young and pretty before slaughter, and I can also tell, more or less, what killed them.”
“Indeed,” said Richard Wolfdon from the shadowed corner where he leaned against the door jamb, ensuring no other person entered. “Two were stabbed. The holes in their bodies and the black scabs of dried blood are still quite obvious. The third was probably bludgeoned. The skull is noticeably cracked.” He paused, then said softly, “Do you agree, Tom?”
“Should I know more than you?” He turned, nodding. “If we disagreed I’d assume my own diagnosis was the one at fault.” Richard watched as Thomas walked quickly away from the stone, coming to Richard’s side. “But yes, I agree,” he said.” The stabbings are clear. The other is a guess, but a wise guess. The cracked skull might have happened after death if the body was dropped or thrown. But death by battering is likely.” He paused sighing. “Yet does it even matter? When a Christian soul dies, does the method make the slightest difference, either on its journey through those miserable paths of purgatory, or to those living souls left behind to understand the crime?”
“Yes, it matters.” Richard spoke softly. “As for the passage of the soul, I’m no priest nor do I study my bible. I read it last as a child learning Latin, and it mentions nothing of purgatory. Yet murder denies the victim any final confession, or chance to be shriven before the last breath.”
“And for those who study the crime, as we do?”
“It tells us a great deal. Every detail matters and provides clues, and it is from the study of clues that we may form conclusions. The manner of death tells us the strength of the killer. It helps towards motive. It explains the circumstances. For instance, were these young women killed where they lay in the attic? Or murdered beforehand in some other distant place, and carried already dead or dying to the attic for burial?”
“Were there blood stains on the attic floorboards near the bodies?”
“There were not. But after ten or fifteen years it might be hard to tell.”
“Can we be sure of the fifteen years?” Tom sighed. “Can we be sure of anything?”
Richard leaned back against the wall where the old plaster was long unpainted, and dust filled the gaps. “A woman killed while naked, is usually the victim of a man. Lust may be the motive. But stabbing and bludgeoning are the tools of anger and frustration, not slow torture. But I doubt the poor creatures were killed in the attic itself. They were taken there afterwards to hide the crime. This tells us that the perpetrator had ready access, which means someone resident, and not a visitor. It also means that the normal method of hiding
a body, which is into the river at high tide, was not, for some reason, a possibility.”
“Oh, Dickon, conclusions please,” Tom said, pulling at the door handle. “These things stink. Have you seen enough? I’ll come to your house to discuss this further.”
“Not my house, Tom. We shall go to yours.” Richard turned, pulling open the door. “I have guests – and, let us say, would sooner discuss this matter without eyes or ears from shadows or doorways.”
Within minutes, Thomas Dunn turned the key in the large iron lock, and opened his own door. His small apartment lay in the great meander of tiny lanes behind St. Paul’s and was flanked by chambers and offices of lawyers on both sides. Immediately into the small solar, Thomas called for wine, then dismissed his page and settled down, elbows to the table, to regard his companion. He said, “Your strange saddlebag of females, Dickon – why are they still your guests? What extravagance. Do they serve your every whim in exchange?”
Richard accepted the cup of cheap wine and drank without expression. “I have no whims, Thomas. And I do not require my guests of either sex to serve me. I keep those women close for entirely different motives.”
“The investigation? Still? We’re damn near in December and you’ve kept your lodgers for more than a month, Dickon. Your cheerful whores must already have told you everything they know.”
“Are they cheerful? I have no idea.” Richard leaned back, hands behind his head. “Nor have I questioned them so rigorously. But they fulfil a purpose all the same. They believe themselves barely noticed. But I notice more when those who are watched remain unaware of the scrutiny.”
Thomas shook his head. “I’ll not criticise although it sounds as weird to me as the three poor abandoned corpses themselves.” He tented his fingers, gazing over their spire. “But I trust every word you say, Dickon, and believe you capable of unearthing most secrets and solving most puzzles. Almost every case I’ve ever worked has come out to my advantage thanks to your aid, and winning me the great legal reputation that comes with it. So if you tell me – then I believe. Or at least, I attempt to believe.”
The Deception of Consequences Page 12
