Barak shrugged, evidently still feeling the visit had been a dangerous waste of time. As we rode on it occurred to me that all who knew about Greek Fire might be in danger: Marchamount, Bealknap, Lady Honor.
‘I’ll have to tell the earl we met Rich,’ Barak said. ‘He’ll not be pleased.’
‘I know.’ I bit my lip. ‘It worries me that all of our three suspects are linked to some of the highest and most dangerous people in the land. Marchamount to Norfolk and Bealknap, apparently, to Rich. And Lady Honor, it seems, to almost everyone.’ I frowned. ‘What is the connection between Rich and Bealknap? I’m sure Bealknap was lying.’
Barak grunted. ‘That’s for you to find out.’ We had reached Cheapside. ‘I’ll leave you here,’ he said. ‘Meet you at the old Moor’s shop at one.’
He rode off south, and I turned down Cheapside. As I rode between the rows of busy stalls I kept a careful eye out. I told myself no one would dare assault me among such a crowd—anyone would surely be seized before he could get away. But I was glad to see a number of constables with their staffs among the crowd. I turned up Walbrook Road, where many imposing merchants’ houses stood. A little way up the street I saw Joseph pacing up and down. I dismounted and shook his hand. He looked strained and tired.
‘I have been to see Elizabeth again this morning.’ He shook his head. ‘Still she says nothing, just lies there, paler and thinner each time.’ He studied me. ‘You look out of sorts yourself, Master Shardlake.’
‘This new case I have is a troubling matter.’ I took a deep breath. ‘Well, shall we face your family?’
He set his jaw. ‘I am ready, sir.’
Then so must I be, I thought. Taking Chancery’s reins, I followed him to an imposing new house. He knocked at the front door. It was answered by a tall, dark-haired fellow of about thirty, dressed in a new jerkin and a fine white shirt. He raised his eyebrows.
‘You! Sir Edwin said you would be calling.’
Joseph reddened at his insolent manner. ‘Is he in, Needier?’
‘Ay.’
I did not like the steward on his looks. He had a broad sly face under long black hair and a stocky frame starting to run to fat. An impertinent servant, I thought, allowed to get above himself. ‘Can someone stable my horse?’ I asked.
The steward called to a boy to take the animal, then led us through a wide hallway and up an imposing staircase, the banisters carved with heraldic beasts. We followed him into a richly appointed parlour hung with tapestries. Through the window I could see a garden, large for a town house. Flower beds with trellised walkways between ran down to a stretch of lawn; the grass was browning at the edges from lack of rain. There was a bench under an oak tree and, nearby, a circular brick well. I saw its top was sealed.
Four people sat on cushioned chairs. All were dressed in black, to my surprise for it was nearly a fortnight since Ralph had died and few wear mourning so long. Sir Edwin Wentworth was the only man among them; seeing him close I saw the resemblance to Joseph not only in his plump red face but in something fussy about his manner. He fumbled with the hem of his robe as he stared at me, eyes hard with anger.
His two daughters sat together: they were as pretty as Joseph had described, both with fair hair falling over the shoulders of their black dresses, milk-white complexions and with startlingly large cornflower-blue eyes. They had been embroidering, but as I entered they laid their needles on their cushions and gave me quick, demure smiles before lowering their heads and sitting with a well-brought-up stillness that was decorous but also a little unnerving, their hands unmoving in their laps.
The third female in the room could not have been more different. Joseph’s mother sat ramrod straight in her chair, snow-white hair gathered under a black cap, veiny hands folded over a stick. She was thin, the planes of her skull visible beneath pale skin that was a patchwork of lines and smallpox scars. Wrinkled eyelids were closed for ever over her decayed eyes. She should have been a pitiful figure, but somehow she dominated the room.
She was the first to speak, turning her head towards me and thrusting out a lantern jaw. ‘Is that the lawyer come with Joseph?’ she asked in a clear voice with a trace of a country accent, showing pearl-white teeth I knew must be false. I shuddered involuntarily, for having dead people’s teeth fixed in your jaw by a wooden plate was a conceit I disliked.
‘Yes, Mother.’ Edwin cast me a look of distaste.
She smiled crookedly. ‘The seeker after truth. Come here, master lawyer, I would know your face.’ She raised a beringed claw and I realized she wanted to feel my features as blind people sometimes will with their social inferiors. I approached slowly, for this was presump tion from a woman who had once been a mere farmer’s wife, but bent down. I felt all the eyes in the room upon me as her hands flickered lightly over my head and face with surprising gentleness.
‘A proud face,’ she said. ‘Angular, melancholic.’ She ran her hands lightly over my shoulders. ‘Ah, a satchel of books and the slip and slide of a lawyer’s robe.’ She paused. ‘They say you are a hunchback.’
I took a deep breath, wondering if she intended to humiliate me or just spoke as she liked out of age.
‘Yes, madam,’ I replied.
She smiled, giving me a glimpse of wooden gums. ‘Well, you can take solace in having a distinguished face,’ she said. ‘Are you a Bible Christian? I hear you were once associated with the Earl of Essex himself, God protect him from his enemies.’
‘When I was younger, I knew him.’
‘Edwin will have no papist in this house. He even gives the girls religious books, encourages them to study the Bible. Such ideas are a little advanced for me.’ She waved a hand at her son. ‘Answer his questions, Edwin,’ she said brusquely. ‘Tell him everything. You too, girls.’
‘Sabine and Avice have had enough, Mother, surely?’ Edwin’s voice was pleading.
‘No. The girls, too.’ Sir Edwin’s daughters cast identical wide blue gazes at their grandmother, apparently as much under the old woman’s spell as their father.
‘We must have all this finished,’ she continued. ‘Perhaps you can imagine, Master Shardlake, the misery Ralph’s death at Eliza beth’s hands has brought our small family. Three weeks ago we were happy, with fine expectations. Look at us now. And Joseph taking Elizabeth’s part makes matters worse. Perhaps you may imagine our feelings about him. We will not have Joseph in our house again after today.’ She spoke calmly, evenly, without turning her head to her oldest son. Joseph lowered his head like a naughty child. I thought what inner courage it must have taken to defy this beldame.
‘Am I right,’ Sir Edwin asked, in a deep voice very like his brother‘s, ‘that if you think Elizabeth is guilty you will cease to represent her? That those are the rules of your trade?’
‘Not quite, sir,’ I replied. ‘If I know she is guilty, then I must and shall cease my representation.’ I paused. ‘May I tell you how the matter seems to me?’
‘Very well.’
I went over the circumstances as I knew them: the girls hearing the scream, looking from the window, then rushing into the garden; Needler coming out and finding Ralph’s body in the well. I felt sorry for the two girls having to listen to the terrible story once more. They cast their heads down again, kept their faces expressionless.
‘But you see,’ I concluded, ‘no one actually saw Elizabeth push the boy into the well. It seems to me he might have slipped.’
‘Then why does she not say so?’ the old woman snapped.
‘Because she knows questioning would bring the truth from her,’ Edwin said with sudden fierceness. ‘Of course she killed Ralph! You didn’t have her in your house nine months, sir; you didn’t see the viciousness she was capable of!’ His mother leaned across and put a hand on his arm and he sat back, sighing angrily.
‘Can you tell me more about that?’ I asked. ‘I only know what Joseph has told me.’
Sir Edwin shot an angry glance at his brother. ‘She was malapert
, disobedient and violent. Yes, sir, violent, though she was but a girl.’
‘From the very start?’
‘She was surly from the day she came, after my brother’s funeral. We were prepared to make allowances as she’d lost everything. I was prepared to share all I had and I am not a poor man, though when I came to London I’d no more than Joseph has.’ Sir Edwin’s chest swelled momentarily with pride, even in the midst of his grief and anger. ‘I told the girls to make her welcome, teach her the lute and virginal, take her out visiting. Much thanks they got. Tell him, Sabine.’
The older girl lifted her head and turned her doll-like eyes on me. ‘She was horrible to us, sir,’ she said quietly. ‘She said she had more to do than tinkle on a music box.’
‘We offered to take her to call on our friends,’ Avice added. ‘To banquets, to meet young gentlemen, but after one or two visits she said she didn’t want to come again, called our friends mannered fools.’
‘We did try, sir,’ Sabine said earnestly.
‘I know you did, girls,’ their grandmother said. ‘You did all you could.’
I remembered what Joseph had told me about Elizabeth’s bookish interests, her love of the farm. She was clearly a girl of independent spirit, different from her cousins, who I guessed would happily limit themselves to womanly interests, aiming only for good marriages. But lack of common interests could scarcely have led to murder.
‘After a while she’d barely speak to us,’ Avice added sadly.
Her sister nodded. ‘Yes, she took to staying in her room.’
‘She had her own room?’ That surprised me. In most households unmarried girls would sleep together in the maidens’ chamber.
‘This is a large house,’ Sir Edwin said haughtily. ‘I am able to provide separate rooms for all my family. In Elizabeth’s case that was just as well.’
‘She’d never have slept with us,’ Sabine said. ‘Why, soon it got so that if either of us went to ask her to join in things, she’d shout at us to go away.’ She flushed. ‘As time went on she started using bad words to us.’
‘She lost all decorum,’ Sir Edwin said. ‘She was scarce like a girl at all.’
The old woman leaned forward, dominating the room again. ‘More and more she seemed to hate us. At meals you couldn’t get a civil word from her. In the end she said she’d take her food in her room and we let her; her presence at table spoiled our meals. When you are blind, Master Shardlake, you are more sensitive to atmospheres, and the atmosphere around Elizabeth grew dark with unreasoning hate for us. As dark as sin.’
‘She hit me once,’ Sabine said. ‘That was in the garden. She took to sitting out on the bench on her own when the weather grew warm. One day she was sitting reading one of her books there and I went and asked her if she would like to come picking mayflowers outside the City walls. And she just picked up her book and started hitting me about the head with it, using terrible words. I ran away to the house.’
‘I saw that myself,’ Sir Edwin said. ‘I was working in my study and I saw Elizabeth fly at my poor daughter from the window. I told Elizabeth to keep to her room for the rest of the day. I should have known then what she might do. I blame myself.’ Suddenly he buried his head in his hands and his voice broke. ‘My Ralph, my boykin. I saw him lying there, dead and stinking—’ He sobbed, a heartbreaking sound.
The girls lowered their heads again and the old woman’s jaw set hard. ‘You see the horrors you raise for us, Master Shardlake.’ She turned to Sir Edwin. ‘Come, my son, fortitude. Tell him how Elizabeth treated Ralph.’
The mercer wiped his face with a handkerchief He glared at Joseph, who seemed near to tears again himself, then at me. ‘I thought at first she might like Ralph better than my daughters. He was another one who went his own way, bless the imp. And he did try to befriend her, he was pleased to have someone new in the house. To begin with they seemed to get on well: she went for a couple of country walks with him, they played chess together. But then she turned against him too. One evening, about a month after she came, I remember we were in here before dinner and Ralph asked Elizabeth to play a game of chess. She agreed, though in a surly way. He was soon winning, forward boy that he was. He leaned forward and took her rook, and said, “There. I have him, that rook will peck out no more eyes from my men.” And Elizabeth threw the board up in the air with a great cry of anger, sending the pieces all over the room, and landed Ralph a great clout on the head. She left him sobbing and ran to her room.’
‘It was a terrible scene,’ the old woman said.
‘We told Ralph to keep out of her way after that,’ Sir Edwin went on. ‘But the boy loved the garden, as why should he not, and she often sat there.’
‘They may say Elizabeth is mad,’ the old woman said. ‘If she won’t speak, no one can be sure. But I say it was wicked jealousy, jealousy because her cousins were more accomplished than her and our household a better one than the home she’d lost.’ She turned her face to me. ‘I felt and heard it all, the growth of her unreasoning hatred and violence, for I stay at home while Edwin is in the City and the girls go visiting.’ She paused with a sigh. ‘Well, Master Shardlake, you have heard us. Do you still doubt Elizabeth threw Ralph down that well?’
I avoided a reply. ‘You were here on that day, madam?’
‘I was in my room. Needler ran up and told me what had happened. It was I ordered him to go down the well. I felt Ralph’s poor dead face when he brought him up.’ She waved a bony hand in the air, as though touching that dead face again. Her harsh features softened for a moment.
I turned to the girls. ‘You agree with what your father and grandmother have said?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Avice said.
‘I wish to God it were not so,’ Sabine added. She passed a hand over her eyes. ‘Grandam,’ she said meekly, ‘my vision is blurred. Do I have to use the nightshade?’
‘Belladonna is good, child. By expanding your pupils, it makes you look more comely. But perhaps a smaller dose.’
I looked at the old woman with distaste. I had heard of drops of deadly nightshade being used in this way for cosmetic purposes, but it was poisonous stuff.
I thought a moment, then stood up. ‘I wonder if I might see Elizabeth’s room, and perhaps the garden, before I go? I will only take a few minutes.’
‘This is too much—’ Sir Edwin began, but once more his mother interrupted.
‘Get Needler to take him. Take Joseph too, then afterwards they can both leave.’
‘Mother—’ Joseph had risen and taken a step towards the old woman. She tightened her grip on her stick and for a moment I thought she might strike him, but she only turned her head abruptly away. Joseph stepped back, his face working. Sir Edwin gave him an angry look, then rang a bell. The steward appeared, so quickly I wondered if he had been listening at the door, and bowed low to his master.
‘Needler,’ Sir Edwin said heavily, ‘Master Shardlake wishes to visit the room that was Elizabeth’s and then the garden. Show them, then show them out.’
‘Yes, Sir Edwin.’ Needler’s manner was obsequious. ‘And cook says he has a dish of blackbirds for tonight, if that pleases you.’
‘Not too much sauce in it this time,’ the old lady said sharply.
‘Yes, madam.’
Neither Sir Edwin nor his mother made any move to say farewell, and the girls lowered their heads, though not before I saw Sabine glance at Needler and redden. I wondered if she could have a fancy for the boor: there was no accounting for young girls’ fancies.
The steward led us out, closing the door with a snap. I was glad to be out of that room. Joseph was pale. Needler looked at us enquiringly.
‘The murderess’s bedroom, is it?’
‘The accused’s room,’ I replied coldly. ‘And mind your tongue, fellow.’ Needler shrugged and led us up a further flight of stairs. He unlocked a door and we passed inside.
Whatever else had happened to her in that house, Elizabeth had had a fine room. T
here was a four-poster bed with a feather mattress, a dressing table with a mirror of glass, and chests for her clothes. There was good rush matting on the floors that gave off a pleasant scent in the warm air. Several books stood on a shelf above the dressing table. I read the titles with surprise: Tyndale’s Obedience of a Christian Man, the Coverdale New Testament, and several devotional works as well as The Castel of Health and Latin poetical works by Virgil and Lucan. A learned little library.
‘Is Elizabeth a religious girl?’ I asked Joseph.
‘A good Bible Christian like all the Wentworths. She liked to read.’
I examined the Testament. It was much thumbed. I turned to Needler. ‘Did Elizabeth speak much of religion?’
He shrugged. ‘Perhaps she reflected on her sins, the way she was treating her family, and asked for God’s help.’
‘She does not seem to have received it.’
‘There is still time,’ Joseph murmured.
‘Did Elizabeth have a maidservant? A woman to help her wash and dress?’
Needler raised his eyebrows. ‘Wouldn’t have one, sir. Said the servants mocked her.’
‘And did they?’
‘Perhaps—at her odd ways.’
‘What happened to Grizzy?’ Joseph asked suddenly. He pointed at a basket in the corner, filled with straw. ‘Elizabeth’s old cat,’ he explained. ‘She brought it from Peter’s house.’
‘It ran away,’ Needler said. ‘Cats do when they come to a strange house.’
Joseph nodded sadly. ‘She was devoted to it.’ So she was deprived even of that company, I thought. I opened one of the chests; it was full of dresses, neatly arranged. I indicated I had seen enough and we left the chamber. The smell of the warm rushes clung to my nostrils; I thought of the contrast with the foul stink in Newgate Hole.
Needler led us downstairs again, through a side door and into the garden. It was a peaceful place in the sunshine, insects buzzing lazily round the flowers. He led us across the lawn, the grass dry under our feet. He paused at the well and pointed to the bench,, shaded by the large oak. ‘That’s where she was sitting when I came out after I heard the young mistresses screaming. Mistress Sabine and Mistress Avice were standing by the well, wringing their hands. “Ralph’s gone,” Mistress Sabine screamed at me. “Elizabeth’s put him in the well.” ’