Murder by Misrule

  ***

  The boy was sent back for Captain Ralegh. Bacon relayed his instructions through Ben and then slipped away with one last sorrowful glance at Mr. Smythson's body. The lads were left to stand guard.

  The lads moved toward the body as if drawn by a string, bending forward to peer down at it. His eyes stared at nothing, open to the gray sky. His lips still snarled, teeth bared, as if he had died shouting curses at his attacker.

  Not a quiet death.

  Pity and disgust knotted together in Tom's belly. Sudden death was always ugly yet somehow fascinating. He couldn't look away.

  They didn't have long to wait. A ringing voice cried, "Hold them here! Block the way!" Then Sir Walter Ralegh rounded the corner on his silver stallion. The Earl of Cumberland was close behind him. He positioned his mount to block the lane. Sir Walter glanced at the lads and down at the corpus as he rode carefully past. He turned his steed to block the farther end.

  Ralegh dismounted and handed his reins to Stephen, who happened to be closest. Stephen recoiled, offended. Tom nipped in and neatly twitched the reins into his own hand to forestall an outburst. Stephen's prickly temper could not abide such minor slights. One of Tom's jobs had been averting these little conflicts, which tended to make Stephen look petulant rather than lordly.

  Trumpet edged him aside to snatch the reins, holding them as if they were relics of immense holiness. Ralegh was his hero.

  "Do you know this man?" Ralegh asked them, eyeing their student robes.

  "Yes, sir, Captain Ralegh." Tom bowed. "He's our tutor, or he was. Mr. Tobias Smythson, an Ancient of Gray's Inn."

  "A lawyer," Ralegh said. "May God rest his soul." He waved the lads back and paced around the body, careful to avoid the swathe of bloodied mud surrounding the torso. He shook his head and spoke to Lord Cumberland. "Well, he's plainly dead. It's equally plain that he was murdered. I judge there was a struggle: witness his face and the state of his garments."

  The barrister's robes were wrenched about, twisted on his body, and smeared with mud along the sides as though he had writhed and fought beneath his attacker. One outstretched arm displayed the velvet welts on his sleeve that proclaimed his profession. He'd argue no more cases in Westminster now.

  Captain Ralegh drew his rapier and used it to lift aside the edges of the robes to reveal the gray doublet underneath. "He's been stabbed, more than once judging by the quantity of blood. See these slashes? And here's bombast, pulled loose by the knife." He pointed with the tip of his sword at a straggle of horsehair, sodden with blood.

  Somehow that tiny detail was more horrible than the whole. Tom grimaced, turned aside, and blew a sour breath from his mouth. Then he remembered the company he was in and schooled himself to turn back. He didn't want these powerful men to think him a coward.

  "More must wait until the body is washed," Ralegh said. "But look at this." He raised cut strands of leather on the edge of his blade. "Purse strings. Four of them. Two purses taken."

  "A thief, then," Cumberland said.

  "Perhaps."

  Ralegh contemplated the body, lips pursed, hand on hip. He was resplendent, a tall, straight figure in silver and white, gleaming in the dusky shadows. Tom glanced at Stephen, who was studying Ralegh's costume as if composing instructions for his tailor. The satin melon hose still held their graceful bell-like shape. The radiant white plumes rose unwilted from his hat as if pulled aloft by a call from heaven. The monochromatic effect of the silver and white was striking. Dramatic but not gaudy.

  Tom suddenly felt like a juggler at a fair. Or a beacon: he should be stood upon a cliff for ships to steer by. The green was well enough, but the yellow was far too bright. And the carnation garters were too much; he'd known it in his heart when he'd put them on.

  Ralegh pointed with his sword at Smythson's hands, which bore two gold rings, one set with a carved black stone. "Was our thief too fastidious to steal the rings from his victim's fingers?"

  Cumberland shrugged. "Perhaps he was disturbed. Or feared to be."

  Ralegh scowled at the crowd gathering beyond Cumberland's copper stallion. "I told that boy to block the way." Then he scanned the area around the body. "Had the man no hat?"

  Tom spotted a crumpled object at the foot of a house and went pick it up. It was a gray capotain hat with a pewter brooch stuck in the crown. He dusted it off and handed it to Ralegh with a small bow.

  Ralegh acknowledged the offering with a short smile. Then his eyes caught on Tom's earring. "That's an exceptional pearl."

  "Thank you, sir." Tom touched the item: a large golden pearl dangling from a gold wire in his left ear. He always wore it. For luck, and to remind him where he came from. "My father brought it back from the South Seas."

  "He sailed with Drake?" Ralegh looked impressed.

  "Yes, sir," Tom said with pride. It wasn't often that his father's vocation brought him credit rather than the reverse.

  Cumberland snapped his fingers. "You're Valentine Clarady's son, I'd wager my horse on it. You're the very spit of him. And I've seen him wear the twin of that pearl myself."

  "So have I," Ralegh said. "I remember him now." Then he frowned as he took another look at Tom's robes. The expression on his face, though fleeting, spoke loud as a hiss to Tom: How does a sailor's son get himself admitted to an Inn of Court?

  Ralegh shook his head and cast a world-weary smile at Cumberland. "Oh, to be free to sail where you will instead of languishing in the stuffy chambers of the court!"

  Cumberland chuckled sardonically and started to respond when a spindle-shanked man in pink chamlet edged past his restive mount.

  "Captain Ralegh," he said, bowing deeply. "I am William Danby, the Queen's Coroner. I've brought a cart." He gestured behind him. Tom spotted the long ears of a donkey poking up above the crowd that had gathered a few yards behind Lord Cumberland's stallion.

  "Good," Ralegh said. "We'll want that presently."

  "Who is the—"

  "A lawyer of Gray's Inn," Ralegh answered. "He's been murdered. By a thief, most likely, although there are elements inconsistent with that theory."

  Tom heard a murmur run through the crowd. Murder. A lawyer. A lawyer's been killed.

  The coroner muttered some pietistic phrase and stooped to draw down Mr. Smythson's eyelids. Tom exhaled a breath of relief, although until that moment he'd not been aware of how much those staring eyes unsettled him. The coroner's assistant spread a discolored blanket over the body and the whole crowd sighed as one.

  Ralegh turned to inspect the other end of the lane. There was nothing to see but his own horse and Trumpet, still faithfully holding the reins. Ralegh granted him a smile, which the boy returned with an expression equally fraught with terror and delight.

  Ralegh tilted his head back and scanned the houses on either side. Most of the windows were shuttered and the few that were open were empty. He turned full circle, plumes dancing as his gaze traveled up to the rooflines and down to the dirt. As he turned back to the coroner, Tom caught a flutter of motion inside a window on the first floor of the house just beyond the protected section.

  Ralegh returned his attention to the coroner. "There doesn't seem to be anything useful to see here." He nodded toward Tom. "These lads say they were pupils of the dead man. They may know something."

  Stephen stepped up. "By your leave, Captain Ralegh, we know very little, but that little I am most willing to impart. I pray you'll allow me to present myself. I am Lord Stephen Delabere, eldest son of the Earl of Dorchester. I first met Mr. Smythson in September, upon entering Gray's Inn, the which Society I joined to learn something of the law. Not that I intend to become a barrister. Naturally not! But to be a man of parts . . . I'm sure you understand."

  Tom winced inwardly, recognizing the onset of a spate of Stephen-prattle. This could go on forever. He was seldom interrupted, thanks to his title, but no one actually listened.

  He saw Ralegh's eyes glaze over and decided to investigate the glimpse of mo
tion he'd caught in that upper-story window. Winking at Trumpet as he slipped past Ralegh's horse, he walked a few yards with his eyes on the ground, hands behind his back, pretending to look for tracks in the neatly raked dirt. Then he quickly spun about and looked up, straight into the face of an angel.

  His heart turned over in his chest. He felt light-headed, weightless, as if his feet had come adrift from the earth. She wasn't really an angel, of course. He knew that with the scrap of his mind still capable of reason. An angel would float on a wisp of cloud or descend in a beam of light, not stand in an oak-framed window with a kerchief on her head.

  She was without question the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Her face was smooth and pale as new ivory. Her hair shone like spun gold, so fair he knew that her deep-set eyes must be as blue as Indian sapphires. Her lips were as red as garnets, plump and full of sensual promise.

  "O, angela luminosa!" Tom clasped his hands to his breast in a fervent gesture.

  She frowned at him — an enchanting frown, the frown of an elfin queen. She waved a slender hand in an unambiguous gesture: Go away!

  Tom shot a glance toward the others to confirm that their view was blocked by Ralegh's horse. He smiled up at the angel and swept his flat black cap from his head, bending forward in a full court bow, right leg extended, toe pointed. He was glad now for the yellow silk stockings and the green velvet slippers, and even gladder that his legs were well shaped.

  The angel frowned again but less severely. Her frown held a touch of melancholy. Perhaps she was lonely. He knew he could win her if he could find a way up to her room.

  "Tom!" Trumpet called. "Where are you?"

  The angel smiled down at him and Tom's breath caught in his throat. She shook her head, pressed a finger to her lips, and disappeared into the depths of her chamber.

  Tom called to her again in a hoarse whisper. "Revertere ad mi, Angela!" Somehow Latin seemed appropriate for an angel.

  Stephen, Ben, and Trumpet filed around Ralegh's horse. "Captain Ralegh wants us to hurry back to Gray's to inform the benchers of what has happened." The benchers were the committee of senior men who governed Gray's Inn. Stephen spoke with urgent determination, as though preparing to lay down his life for the mission. Tom doubted the sacrifice would be necessary since they had walked from Westminster to Gray's nearly every day for the past two and a half months without incident.

  "What were you looking at?" Trumpet asked.

  "I've seen an angel," Tom announced. "I'm in love."

  "Oh, not again." Stephen groaned.

  "How can you fall in love at the scene of a bloody murder?" Trumpet demanded.

  Tom shrugged, grinning, helpless. "Love goes by haps. Cupid takes you where he will."

  Ben rolled his eyes. "We'd best hurry, Signor Amore, if we're going to be the first ones home with the news."

  Tom followed the others down the lane, his feet moving at their own direction, his mind filled with the image of his angel's pouty lips and deep-set eyes.

  "Who would murder poor Mr. Smythson?" Trumpet asked.

  "A thief," Stephen said. "Or a madman."

  "I always liked him," Tom said, wrenching his thoughts back to earthly matters. "He was fair. He never tried to catch you out with tricky cases when he knew you were hungover." Smythson had been a decent tutor, firm yet patient, even with Stephen. Tom offered that thought as a silent prayer, hoping it would count in the man's favor when he faced his Maker.