Murder by Misrule

CHAPTER 39

  Tom covered Trumpet's head with his jerkin as they scurried on to Gray's. They slipped into Trumpet's staircase without being seen. Luckily, Mr. Welbeck was out. Trumpet locked the door behind them. Tom grabbed him, or her, by the shoulders and turned her, or him, around. He studied his erstwhile boon companion's features as if he had never seen a human face before.

  "You're very pretty," he said at last.

  Trumpet grinned up at him, eyes dancing.

  "That moustache was pathetic. I felt sorry for you."

  Trumpet laughed. The laugh sounded musical. Had it been musical before?

  "How long have you been a girl?" Tom realized the minute the words left his lips how absurd they were.

  Trumpet's giggles were contagious. Soon they were both howling with laughter, leaning against each other for support.

  Tom felt weak, as if his bones had turned to soggy strips of pastry. "I think I'm going to fall down."

  "Here, sit." Trumpet helped him to a stool. He only landed half his arse on the first try and had to stomp a leg out to keep from capsizing. He balanced his elbows on his thighs and carefully lowered his head into his hands.

  Trumpet stood beside him, patting him on the back. "You've had a difficult day." His voice trembled with laughter.

  Tom groaned his agreement. "Is everyone a girl?"

  Trumpet giggled again. Had he always been such a giggler?

  "Is Ben a girl?"

  More giggling. Well, that one deserved it. No one could be less girlish than Benjamin Whitt. The man had hair on his back and his voice was an octave lower than God's.

  A hideous thought flashed into Tom's mind and he sat up straight. "I took you to a brothel!"

  Trumpet nodded happily. "That was one of the most interesting experiences I have ever had. That whore was most informative. I can't thank you enough for taking me."

  Tom watched her with amazement. It was like watching a pony discourse on the art of embroidery. He blinked several times and shook his head. It didn't help. "That's why you insisted on a private room."

  "I'm fairly certain you would have seen through my disguise if I'd stayed with you."

  "You were in there for an hour!" Tom knew there were more pressing questions, but he couldn't get past this one. "What in the names of all the Seven Seas were you doing?"

  "Talking," Trumpet said. "Mostly."

  Tom knew that mostly would haunt him for many sleepless nights to come.

  She, or he — no, definitely she — giggled again. Her giggles were cute. Charming, even.

  "You're adorable," Tom said, not realizing that his mouth had opened.

  Trumpet's eyes flashed and Tom was rocked back in his chair as a very wet, very sturdy girl landed in his lap. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him. Next thing he knew, he was kissing her back with considerable pleasure.

  "Wait, wait, wait." He managed to free his lips and disengage her arms from his neck, budging her off his lap with a shake of his knees. He shot a brief prayer of thanks for last night's vigorous love-making and its calming effect on the said lap. Which thought brought a twinge of guilt about Clara; not that he needed another reason for not kissing his old comrade.

  Which thought overloaded his feeble wits altogether.

  Trumpet sighed. "You have no idea how long I've wanted to do that."

  "Don't tell me, I beg you." He scratched his beard and gazed at the floor for several long moments. Was it in truth a floor? Or was it painted paper, like the scenery in a masque? He tapped on the floor with the toe of his soggy boot. It felt solid enough.

  He remembered the other question. "Who are you?"

  "I am Lady Alice Trumpington, only child and heiress of Lord William Trumpington, the third Earl of Orford." She sank into a full court curtsy with an agile grace that would have left the average noblewoman gnawing her lips in envy.

  Tom wasn't surprised by the grace. He had coached the lad at fencing and found him an able opponent.

  "Why?"

  "Why? To learn the law, of course." Trumpet seemed to think the reason was self-evident. "Books are not enough. You need the moots and the bolts, the case-putting after supper. Full immersion in the subject and the language. You need a man like Ben to help you through the hard parts. Would Francis Bacon tutor a girl in Law French?"

  "But women aren't supposed to learn the law. It's too strenuous for them. They aren't allowed in universities either."

  "And why shouldn't we be? We have brains, have we not? Should we not exercise them as we exercise our bodies? Do you want untutored idiots rearing your children and managing your estates?"

  Tom shrugged. "My mother isn't an idiot, and she manages our estates expertly. With the help of a competent steward, of course." He wasn't much interested in this dispute, having heard it time and again from Mrs. Sprye. But he enjoyed the way Trumpet tossed her raven hair and stamped her little foot. How had he never noticed the lushness of her lashes? He shook his head. He was in love with Clara, and one woman was more than enough at present.

  Trumpet blew out her impatience with his lack of interest in her lecture, forming a neat pout with her cupid-bow lips.

  Tom shook his head again, harder. Thinking about Trumpet as a girl was equal parts stimulating and disturbing. No, at least three-quarters disturbing.

  She watched him, her expression a mixture of amusement and disappointment. "I'm going to change." She turned on her heel and stalked into the inner chamber.

  "Into what?" Tom called after her. "A unicorn?"

  "Ha-ha," came the witty retort.

  Tom got up and started poking around the room. These chambers boasted an exceptionally large hearth lined with soot-blackened bricks. No fire was lit and yet the room was quite comfortable. "Why is it so warm in here?"

  "We share a chimney with the kitchen."

  "Ah. I forgot. You're lucky."

  "I love it. I hate to be cold."

  "Like a girl," Tom said softly. He thought back over the past three months, lingering over scenes in which he perhaps ought to have recognized that Trumpet was a girl. She'd always refused to use the privy in company, but her excuses were plausible enough. Some boys — and men — were like that, even on board ship. They couldn't piss if anyone was watching. Then at dancing and fencing lessons, where they stripped off their doublets for the freedom of movement, she'd always kept her shirt buttoned up right to her ruff. He dug into that memory. No, there'd been nothing to see beneath that shirt. No wobble, no bobble. No nipple. She must have bound her breasts with white linen. Unless she was flat-chested. Otherwise, everyone dressed and undressed in their own chambers. Why wouldn't they?

  He had to give her credit at the skillfulness of her deception. "You're a very good boy." That didn't come out quite right.

  She laughed, understanding his meaning. She always did. "Why, thank you, kind sir. My uncle helped. He enjoys the deception as much as I do. He likes putting one over on the other barristers. He's the one that came up with the wispy moustache. He said men would feel sorry for me and not want to look at me directly, for fear of shaming me."

  "Your uncle is too clever for his own good." Tom ruffled through the papers on the desk he guessed was Trumpet's. Her commonplace books were as tidy as Ben's, inscribed in her neat, round hand and cross-indexed, with a table of contents inside the cover. "Why do you want to study the law? You're good at it, mind you. You're ten times the scholar I am. But why bother? It's excruciating."

  "It's fascinating."

  "But you're an earl's daughter. You should be at court. You could be a lady-in-waiting to the queen, like those girls we saw the other week."

  She squealed in disgust. "Can you imagine how boring that is? Waiting: that's what ladies-in-waiting do. You live in a common bedchamber, constantly chaperoned by the queen's old cronies. You can flirt with men who only want your father's title and your dowry, you can do needlepoint, you can play with clothes, and that's all. No fencing, no brawling, no moots, no brothels. No ch
allenges. Nothing! I'd rather be like Clara and earn my own living."

  "I sincerely doubt that Clara has ever visited a brothel."

  "You know what I mean."

  He did. Her complaints reminded him of his scorn for the life of those Essex men. "I do. I think I do. Those people at court did look peevish, didn't they? Bored and bitter and struggling to hide it. I care about clothes as much as the next man, but I'd hate for that to be the center of my existence. A man needs a purpose in life."

  "So does a woman," Trumpet said.

  "If you say so." He began to browse the books on the shelf. Some of them were probably Trumpet's. He wondered what she would do with her law books when she went back to being an heiress. "You don't have to go to court," he called over his shoulder. "You could stay home and do whatever earls' daughters do."

  "They do nothing." Trumpet's head appeared around the edge of the door.

  "They must do something."

  "No, they don't." Her eyes flashed. "An earl's daughter is expected to be as idle as a midwife in a nunnery. Decorous and passive. She can read devotions. She can study certain kinds of literature, chiefly religious. Certainly not Ovid or Horace. Nothing too exciting: no battles or seductions. At least, not when anyone's looking. She can practice dancing, but no leaping. She can play the virginals, but not too well. She can ride; that's the only good thing."

  "I can't imagine you sitting in a window reading devotionals all day," Tom said. "You'd be out brawling with the stable boys or dismantling the east wing or some such."

  She gazed at him with an inscrutable expression. "You'd let me, wouldn't you? If you were my husband."

  Tom frowned and shook his finger at her. "The brawling has to stop. Not only because it's obnoxious but because sooner or later you're going to get hurt and need a surgeon and then your secret will be out." He stopped short. He'd just given his approval for the whole scheme. Ah, well. He liked Trumpet; he had from the first. He couldn't stop now merely because the lad was a lass. He shrugged. "Ovid? Fencing? I have no objection. The east wing would be entirely your concern."

  She sighed. She didn't seem to have made much progress on the dressing front, but then Tom couldn't see much. He tilted his head to get a better look.

  She drew in a sharp breath and flung open the door, revealing herself clad in nothing but a long shirt and her raven tresses. The shirt was not opaque and she was definitely not flat-chested. Her figure was womanly in every way except that her limbs showed the sleek lines of muscles that could lift more than a feather fan.

  Tom's jaw dropped. "God's light, Trumpet," he whispered. "You're a woman!"

  She put one hand on a curvy hip and flaunted her figure. The lad had never been shy. Tom acknowledged the effect with an appreciative grin.

  "How old are you?" he demanded.

  "I'll be eighteen in April." The woman whose sometime name was Trumpet padded toward him on her well-arched and finely boned feet. Tom suddenly felt very much like a pig being stalked by a panther.

  "Wait one minute." He took a step backward.

  "I could help you forget about Clara," she murmured in a throaty voice.

  "Oh, no," he said. "I mean — I mean: no, no, please no. You're an earl's daughter." He held out both hands to stop her. "I am absolutely, positively certain that Trumpet was a virgin when we took him to that brothel. You rather obviously didn't know, er, how things worked. And since all you did in that place was talk, I am equally certain that you remain a virgin still."

  "I don't have to be," Trumpet-Alice purred. She walked her long fingers up Tom's arm and curved her hand around his neck. The gesture arched her back, lifting her ripe breasts fully into his line of sight.

  Tom's body hummed with a more than willing response. His heart turned somersaults of confusion in his chest. His brain — last out of the gate — told his lesser parts to behave themselves and answered, in a strangled voice, "I am absolutely, positively certain that you do." He grasped her hand and returned it to her. "I beg you, my dearest friend Trumpet, turn yourself back into a boy. At least until the present crisis is over."

  She regarded him through her lush lashes for a moment, lips curved in an inscrutable smile. "I knew you'd say no." She raised herself up on her tiptoes and kissed him lightly on the cheek. Then she flounced in a manner most feminine back to her bedchamber. The which environment Tom steadfastly refused to contemplate.

  He blew out a breath, rubbing his hands over his head and pulling on his hair. Law school was infinitely more perilous than he had imagined it would be. "You still haven't told me why you want to be a lawyer," he called once the panther was safely back in its lair.

  "I don't want to be a lawyer. I only want to learn enough law to hold on to my own property when I marry."

  "Is that hard to do?"

  "Yes." Her voice dripped with scorn. "If the men who are supposed to love and protect you turn out to be villainous, onion-eyed varlets whose only thought is piling up riches so they can gamble them away, it is."

  "Ah," Tom said. "And this oniony puttock would be — let me guess — His Lordship, the earl? Your father?"

  "In a nutshell. He's a greedy tyrant, a money-grubbing brute, and a foul pustule."

  Tom chuckled. The lad had a gift for cursing.

  She wasn't finished. "He married my mother for her money and stole it all away from her. As much as he could get his hands on, anyway. Her first husband did a good job of tying up the bulk of it in uses and trusts. But my father gave her nothing, no allowance, barely clothes enough to keep her warm. He squandered what should have been her allowance on mistresses and harebrained schemes. And he was cruel to her. He never laid a hand on her, not that I ever saw, but he belittled her at every turn. He broke her heart. I know that's why she died."

  "I'm so sorry." Tom couldn't imagine it. His father was away at sea for months on end, but he and his mother loved each other deeply. They delighted in each other, more even than in their children, on whom they doted full well. His home life had been sometimes chaotic, what with his father's hazardous adventuring and the peculiar folk drifting in from ships for periods ranging from days to years. Their fortunes had risen and fallen like a ship in a heavy sea. But he had always been safe and loved.

  "Thanks," Trumpet said. "I know you don't understand. Be glad you don't. Then my father did the same thing again to his own sister. When her husband died, he sent in a phalanx of lawyers and stole her estate right out from under her feet. She lives with us now in a corner of the old wing, creeping about like a mouse, grateful for crumbs."

  "That's awful." Tom's aunties' chambers were every bit as gracious as his mother's. They were authoritative persons, to be respected and obeyed. Or charmed and wheedled, depending on the occasion. Together with his Uncle Luke, the one-legged boatswain who had saved his father's life back when Tom was a baby and lived with them thenceforward, they formed a sort of household Privy Council.

  He spied a fat almanac on a high shelf and took it down, thinking to consult his horoscope. He could use all the advice he could get at this juncture. He called out, "But what can you do? He is your father after all." He wanted to keep her talking. Talk was safe. Talking was far, far better than coping with scantily clad virgins who used to be boys.

  "I can learn the law, so I can defend myself. With knowledge and a trustworthy lawyer, I can lock up my mother's hidden assets in unbreakable trusts. I won't be cheated by my father or my husbands."

  "How many husbands are you planning to have?"

  She didn't answer.

  Tom laid the almanac on Trumpet's desk and lifted the cover. The book fell open in two halves, the pages glued together with a square cut out of the center of each side. One half held a set of six disks made of hard clay. He was only mildly surprised. The season of Misrule had infected the whole Chain of Being. Naturally, a book would not be a book.

  Curious, he picked up one of the disks and examined it. It was shaped like a thin, flat cup, with a design etched into the bowl
. A design exactly like that on an English shilling.

  "Trumpet?"

  "It's a mold for counterfeiting." Her voice came from right behind him. He spun around, ready to defend his — or her — virtue.

  But she had reverted to boyhood, complete with moustache. The transformation was remarkable. Tom breathed a sigh of relief. "Much better."

  "I know." Even her voice sounded different. He detected no trace of musicality. At least he wasn't that much of a fool.

  "So, your uncle is a coiner?" He was grateful to have a fresh topic ready to hand. "How long have you known?"

  "About the coins? Not long. That he's a crypto-Catholic and has been working with the Jesuits to distribute pamphlets and smuggle priests into England?"

  Tom gawped at her.

  She nodded. "Since last summer. I came across a stack of pamphlets in his house when I stopped on my way to court to become a lady-in-waiting. We reached an agreement and my plans changed."

  "You've been blackmailing him."

  She shrugged. "Blackmail is such a strong word. Some might say an ugly word. But not, in this case, an incorrect word."

  "How could you keep this to yourself? Especially since Smythson was murdered. Did you never think to tell someone, like the queen, perhaps? Or at least Mr. Bacon."

  Trumpet clucked her tongue. "Tom, Tom, Tom. You do not understand how blackmail works. I keep your secret —" she tapped him on the chest, once for each word. "— And you give me what I want. If I told anyone, I would have to go home."

  "But these pamphlets are dangerous! Even Ben thinks so."

  "Fie! You read one of them. They're the most pathetical piffle. Besides, they were meant to go straight to Derbyshire, where, I assure you, everyone is already a Catholic. They won't convert a single soul."

  "What about the coins? You saw them the other night at the gaming tables. Those people have been cheated."

  She shrugged. "A few gamblers won less than they thought. The losers lost less, so it evens out."

  "That actually sounds almost logical."

  "Thank you, sir." Trumpet executed a tidy half bow. When she straightened, her face was sober. "There's worse, though, Tom. I'm afraid my uncle killed the Fleming. I found a shirt with bloody cuffs wadded up behind the cupboard."

  "How did you —"

  "I looked because he's gone. His saddlebags and most of his clothes are missing."

  "Since when?"

  "Last night sometime. We were up so late, remember? With all the gaming and dancing in the hall. He wasn't here when I dragged myself in. When I woke up, I realized that he hadn't slept in the bed."

  Tom bristled. "You share a bed with your uncle?"

  "No, I have a trundle bed. He goes out before I get up. My clothes are tailored so I can dress myself and my laundry goes to the Antelope."

  "Mrs. Sprye knows about this?"

  Trumpet tilted her pretty head and laughed. "It was her idea in the first place. Well, we thought of it together, all three of us. That's irrelevant. The point is that Uncle Nat killed the Fleming. And now he's flown."

  "Why didn't you tell me about this before? It's slightly important, don't you think?"

  Now Trumpet folded her arms, tapped her foot, and glowered. "When precisely was there time? It's been Clara, Clara, Clara since we met you outside the gaol this morning."

  Tom chose to ignore the unmistakable whine of jealousy in her voice. He swiftly vowed to ignore that particular bramble patch for as long as possible. "Do you think your uncle killed Mr. Smythson? And Shiveley?"

  "No, I don't believe he did. He seemed genuinely grieved by their deaths. One evening, he went on and on about how nothing was being done to bring Smythson's killer to justice. I was the only one here, his only audience. Why would he bother to put on a show?"

  "We have to tell Mr. Bacon."

  "I know." Trumpet sighed. "It's all ruined. I'll have to leave Gray's and go home or to court. No more wandering the streets of London with you and Ben, going where we please and doing what we like. Eating pies outside a stall. No more going to the theater without a guardian. No more taverns, no more moots. Nothing fun."

  He felt a surge of sympathy. Trumpet was a born lawyer, every bit as good as Ben. If she'd wanted to be a soldier or a sailor or something requiring manly strength, that would be a different matter. But the law was a sedentary profession. The Westminster courts were full of women, pressing suits and answering warrants. By the winds that filled his father's sails, the queen herself was a woman. Why shouldn't Trumpet argue cases if she wanted to so badly?

  Tom didn't like to see his friends cast down. He'd have to think of a way to help her, after he freed Clara from Newgate, got Mr. Bacon well again, and sent the Gray's Inn murderer to the gallows.