Murder by Misrule
***
Tom awoke with a start. Church bells were tolling eight of the clock, and someone was pounding on a door somewhere far away, loud, echoing. Three blows and a pause. Three blows and a pause, like a sledge hammering a nail.
Where was he?
Then he felt her in his arms, warm and soft and smelling of woman and roses and faintly of paint. Clara, his angela luminosa, truly his at last. He smiled to himself as he nuzzled Clara's shoulder, inhaling her rich fragrance, storing it up in his memory like hay stacked in a deep barn.
He'd had sex before, naturally; he was no stripling boy. He and Stephen had sampled most of the brothels in Smithfield. He'd had his share of tavern wenches in empty chambers and dairy maids in haystacks and even once a restless wife in the musty storeroom behind her shop.
Women wanted him, and he was generous by nature.
This was different. He loved Clara and she loved him. Love made the act transcendental. "Angela mia," he whispered into her downy neck. "Ti adoro."
Ah, he'd woken her. No, she had been awake and savoring this moment too. She stirred and started to sit up. He snuggled her closer to his chest. "It's someone with a tooth that needs pulling. Naught to do with us."
"I do not believe so." Clara wriggled against him for a blissful moment then slapped him on the arm. He released her. She sat up, clutching a corner of the blanket to cover her breasts, for the warmth.
Which Tom knew because they had left modesty far behind last night.
He propped himself up on one elbow. "What else could it be on a Sunday morning?"
She hissed at him to be silent and listened intently to the sounds of the house. A murmur of voices below, some of them men's by their pitch, but what of it? A surgeon's hours were not fixed like a goldsmith's.
A patter of slippers on the wooden stairs stopped outside Clara's door, followed by a series of sharp raps.
Clara didn't call out to ask who it was. She slid from the bed and wrapped her cloak around her naked body and opened the door the barest sliver. "Wat is het?"
Tom hoped it was something easily managed. He wanted to explore her all over again, from her nose to her toes, in full daylight, using his eyes this time as well as his hands and his lips. He had also been hoping for a chance to leave her room unnoticed. He'd meant to slip out at dawn, but it was too late for that. Perhaps everyone would go to church. He grinned. Perhaps he'd be forced to spend the whole day in Clara's bed.
Alas, no. Clara and the woman on the other side of the door spoke in Flemish, but their mounting alarm needed no translation. Tom knew the sound of trouble when he heard it.
The whispers ended. Clara shut the door and leaned against it, staring at Tom with terror in her eyes. Her palpable fear sent a jolt right through him.
He leapt from the bed and wrapped his arms around her, gathering her into the shelter of his body. "What is it, my darling?"
"They are here for me." She tilted her face to him.
"Who? What? Why? I won't let them."
She shook her head. "Nay, you cannot help me."
"It's about him, isn't it? That pusillanimous varlet. Your late and unlamented husband." Tom had told her, in the whispers of the night, about the Fleming's murder.
"They want to question me, she says. They will take me to Newgate."
"Newgate!" The prison was notorious. He took her face in both his hands and held her gaze, willing his strength into her heart. "I will protect you, my angel."
She smiled wanly, but shook her head. "You cannot. The undersheriff is here himself with a letter."
"A pox on the undersheriff and his letters!"
They helped each other into their clothes. They combed their hair and splashed water on their faces from the bowl on Clara's nightstand. They stood face-to-face in the center of the small room and gave each other a final inspection. However tidy their appearance, Tom's mere presence on the scene at such an hour guaranteed what conclusions would be drawn by those below.
The bottom of the stair was blocked by a group of women who stood with linked arms, glaring at a pair of burly constables. They parted to allow Clara and Tom to descend, gaping at Tom and whispering in Flemish after they had passed. The constables leered and snickered, making Clara blush.
Tom's own cheeks burned. He glanced at her, but she kept her eyes riveted on the rush-strewn floor. He'd made her a whore by emerging from her bedchamber so early on a Sunday morning. He hoped he could make up for it by sending this undersheriff packing. He was a gentleman of the Inns of Court after all. At least, he was dressed like one.
Elizabeth Moulthorne stood in her surgery, clutching a blue woolen cloak about her neck. She glowered furiously at a man wearing a large pewter badge.
"Are you one Clara Goossens?" The undersheriff read the name from the letter he held in his flabby hand, mangling the pronunciation and making Clara sound like a backward goose girl.
The man had a sunken chest, a vast, round arse, and pinstick legs. Worse, he had dressed himself in a putrid mustard color that emphasized his florid complexion. Tom wished Stephen was here to share his contempt for this sartorial disaster. And to play the lord, summoning centuries of inherited hauteur to send this minion packing.
Tom was suddenly keenly aware of his own powerlessness. Absurd as this paunchy man might look, he had authority in the badge on his chest and the document in his hand. Not to mention the burly constables, either one of whom was a match for Tom. A sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach told him the cause was lost.
He wrapped a protective arm around Clara. "What is the meaning of this intrusion? Don't you know today is the Sabbath?"
The undersheriff attempted to look down his nose at Tom but failed since he was the shorter by several inches. "I have a warrant for the arrest of one Clara Goossens, Fleming, resident of this house."
"On what charge?"
"She's wanted for questioning in the death of her husband." The pewling official consulted his letter. "One Caspar Von Ruppa, also a Fleming. Murdered by stabbing to death with a knife."
Gasps arose from the women on the stairs. "Oh, Clara!" one said. "You shouldn't have!"
"I never did!" Clara cried.
"Of course she didn't kill him," Tom said. "She couldn't have. I am he who discovered the corpus. We came upon it only moments after the deed was done. The Widow Goossens was nowhere in the vicinity during the critical interval." He struggled for legal terms, formal terms, anything that would make him sound more important than the youthful lover he was.
"No one claims that she herself held the knife that killed him." The undersheriff clearly meant to imply that she had arranged for that knife, however. "She is merely wanted for questioning."
"She can be questioned here, then, in the company of her landlady and of myself."
"No. She is to be taken to Newgate Prison and held there at the pleasure of the queen until this matter has been resolved."
"By whose order?" Tom reached his hand toward the official. "Let me see that letter."
"The warrant is signed by one Sir Avery Fogg, Treasurer of Gray's Inn."
"What!" Tom released Clara and stepped forward to snatch the letter from the man's hand. He read it through rapidly. Sure enough, there was Fogg's signature at the bottom.
Why hadn't he paid more attention when they'd gone to observe the courts in Westminster? He'd spent most of the term whispering jokes, mocking costumes and mannerisms, instead of learning the law. Now he needed it. If only Ben were here, or even Trumpet. He wanted to howl his rage to the rafters and lift this tottering undershit by the ears and shake him into pieces.
But he couldn't. He could do nothing but stand with clenched fists and flaming cheeks, impotent, while the undersheriff tilted his chin at the constables. They laid their sweaty hands upon Clara's slender frame and bore her, weeping, out the door and into a waiting cart.
"Tom!" she wailed, the hopelessness in her voice shredding his heartstrings.
He followed the cart
down the lane, stumbling on lumps of garbage, heedless of his velvet slippers. "I'll get you out. I promise you, sweetling."