Murder by Misrule

CHAPTER 38

  Dinner that day was a tense affair. Stephen, unable to pry any details about Bacon's accident out of either Tom or Trumpet, resorted to loud ramblings about his reign of misrule. Tom pretended to listen while he constructed an elaborate masque in which he rescued Clara from Newgate by stealth, substituting Stephen, unconscious and dressed as a harlot, in her place.

  After dinner, Tom and Trumpet spent a good hour running errands for Ben on Bacon's behalf. They sent a boy to fetch the one physician Bacon trusted; they instructed the staff of Gray's to deliver hot water and light meals on a schedule, but quietly, quietly; and they bundled up a supply of fresh linens, a favorite pillow, and other necessities for Ben, who refused to stir from Bacon's bedchamber until his servant returned.

  Ben couldn't even hear words not related to Bacon's comfort. When Tom tried to tell him about Clara's predicament, he'd looked at him as if he were speaking gibberish. He guarded Bacon like a dragon guards a chest of gold, barely allowing Tom to peek at him through the doorway. There would be no help from that direction.

  Tom racked his brains for another source of trustworthy advice. Luckily for his overstrained wits, the answer sprang quickly forth: Mrs. Anabel Sprye at the Antelope Inn. She knew every judge in Westminster and would understand Tom's involvement in the case without insisting on any uncomfortable details.

  Trumpet came with him. They were silent as they walked down to Holborn, each occupied with heavy thoughts. Tom felt that he was trapped in a shrinking chamber, walls closing in and squeezing out the very air he needed to live. Smythson's death had been horrible, of course, but unreal; painted, as it were, with the colors of the Queen's Day pageantry. Shiveley's death had been shocking and sad, but Tom had hardly known the man. If his death had truly been an accident, he would almost have forgotten it by now.

  The Fleming, though: he'd had a conflict with the Fleming. A powerful connection, in fact. Tom had hated him. He'd wanted to slice him through with his rapier, to cow him with his superior status. He'd wanted him defeated, brought to his knees, banished from Clara's life.

  But not dead. His death had left Tom with the frustration of deeds undone.

  Now Clara was falsely imprisoned in a perilous gaol. His fear for her ran hot and constant, driving him through every new-demanded chore in a feverish agony. Never in all his life had he felt so useless. And now Bacon, who on a normal day made Tom feel like an upstart pantry boy grasping at honors he couldn't understand, lay on his bed all pale and fragile, snatched from death's snapping jaws by the sheerest accident of choosing one errand over another. More than anything, Tom wanted to prove to his brilliant tutor that he, the privateer's son, was worthy of inclusion in the Society of Gray's Inn.

  He couldn't do that if the man were dead.

  This murdering traitor must be stopped. Tom had to stop him. When this had begun, it had seemed a new sort of game. Tom had been one of four friends guided by a clever tutor. Now Stephen, bosom companion for many years, had turned into a prattling, make-believe prince who had betrayed a crucial secret. Not to mention making a perfect jackanapes of himself. He was worse than useless. And Ben, the man he'd come to admire and rely on for guidance, chose to sit by Bacon's bed night and day, oblivious to the world outside the chamber.

  Not that Tom blamed him. A guard was definitely required, and at this point, they didn't know who they could trust.

  That left Tom with only Trumpet to help him rescue Clara, solve the murders, and put the world right again. After which, he decided, he would bundle up Clara and Ben and Trumpet and Francis Bacon too, if necessary, and carry them back to his mother's house in Dorset, where everyone would be safe, and he could lie on a soft bed in a warm room and let his sisters and aunties and Uncle Luke pamper him and feed him sweets until this whole miserable season of misrule had faded into a humorous anecdote.