Witness of Bones Page 9

  Elspeth spoke sharply, although there was a quiver in her voice. “What do you want here? You’ve no business here, now my brother’s dead. Your business is with his successor, or with Master Hopwood.”

  “Hopwood is his successor, but I have no business with Hopwood, either. I am no longer Lady Elyot’s servant. I’ve left to seek opportunities elsewhere. And indeed I’ve found them.”

  He looked at her boldly under his heavy brows, as though waiting for her to ask who his new employer was. In fact, she was curious, but also determined not to please him by asking. She would not satisfy his pride any more than she would his lust. She stood with her jaw set, her arms folded across her breasts, staring down at him.

  After a moment Stearforth turned his attention to the children and beckoned them to come to his side. He lifted the girl into his lap with one hand and with the other drew the boy close to him. “It’s a hot day for the month. I wouldn’t mind a drink. What have you?”

  “Nothing for you,” she said, trying to keep her voice even, trying not to show fear.

  “Oh, come now Elspeth. What’s past is past. Forgive like the good Christian you claim to be. You misconstrued my meaning last time I was here. I aimed at no more than a little

  harmless flirtation. If you thought I meant more you misread my character.”

  “I doubt I misread your character or your intention,” she said.

  He bent forward, retracting his long legs. “I said I was thirsty. Get me something to drink and do it now.”

  As he spoke he clutched her son tightly to him so that she could see the look of surprise and pain on the little white face.

  “You go into the kitchen and play a good housewife’s part or shall I show the boy a thing in my pocket?”

  “I’ll go,” she said, her voice breaking. “Just don’t hurt my son or daughter.”

  Behind her she heard Stearforth laugh genially and tell the children how queer their mother was that she had such difficulty understanding the queen’s English. Why one would think he had ill designs upon her and the children, when all he intended was good. He asked the children if they knew what good was and received no response.

  Elspeth poured some ale in a cup, her hand trembling so that she nearly spilled the ale. She hurried back where Stearforth was. He was still clutching the children. The girl was sobbing quietly.

  He had to release her son to take the cup. He took a long draught and said: “You know, I am often in your neighborhood now. I could stop by frequently if the mood struck me. What did you tell Stock’s wife?”

  “Nothing,” Elspeth said.

  He regarded her skeptically. “Give me some credit, Elspeth. Do you take me for a fool? I watched your house a good hour while you spoke with the woman. Don't tell me you sat in silence. It’s unthinkable that two women should do so.”

  “We talked of my brother. She tried to persuade me that her husband was innocent.”

  “And of course you believed every word.”

  “I told her to leave.”

  “After an hour?”

  “Shortly after she arrived, after I found out who she was. But she would not leave.”

  He watched her while he raised the cup and finished the ale. Then he wiped his mouth and beard with the back of his hand and let the girl run to her mother’s side. He rose and walked outside. “Be wise, Elspeth. If the Stock woman returns let the constable know of it. Her husband might as well be dead, so great the evidence is against him. She herself is sought by the law—as an accomplice. You are doing your children a disservice by entertaining her in your house, and dishonoring your late brother’s memory. Why, the law might suppose you were implicated in your brother’s death. You are his heir, are you not?”

  Elspeth said nothing. The outrageous and shameful accusation struck her dumb. She concentrated her fury in her gaze, while he stood calmly looking up at the sky, like a seaman searching for a star to steer by.

  “You have handsome children, Elspeth. It would be horrible if something were to happen to them. Some accident I mean. Maybe I or one of my friends will keep a watch on the house. Just to make sure nothing ill befalls the children. You understand. Oh, don’t bother to thank me. Consider my concern a gesture of friendship, a way of making amends for the little misunderstanding we had.”

  He turned his eyes from the sky and looked at her intently. He smiled and said, “By the way, did Stock’s wife say where she was staying in London?”

  “She didn’t say.”

  “What a shame, then. Yet she will be found—and taken. Never fear. Justice will be done in Stephen’s case. Remember what I said. I’ll be keeping my eye on the house.”

  She watched him walk toward the lane. She called out after him, “Stearforth, did you kill Stephen? Did you murder my brother?”

  He stopped and turned slowly. “Remember,” he said, as though her question had no greater purpose than to inquire of his health. “I’ll be watching you.”

  Nine

  Joan left Elyot House, her eagerness to trace Stearforth to his current employer sending her toward Paul’s, forgetful of how tired she was and how frightened, a stolid determination ruling her. What else had she to do but keep busy while Matthew languished in prison and the queen s secretary, frustrated by his ignorance of his enemy, meditated a revenge to come when Joan should have found the enemy out.

  Even so late in the day a great crowd milled around the cathedral. The bookstalls there were full of customers and a motley assembly of gallants, gentlemen, tradesmen, foreigners (how they stuck out in their outlandish dress, yapping in their outlandish tongues), common merchants, and city officials testified to the extent that the city used the cathedral as a common meeting place as well as a house of God. There were women too, some very respectable-looking and usually accompanied by some man for safety’s sake. Also a devil’s plenty of whores sidling up to the men, mincing, leering from round painted eyes like puppets’.

  Joan watched the scene for a while, at too great a distance to identify individual faces. She pictured Stearforth in her mind; under her breath she pronounced his name as though

  doing so might invoke his presence. She looked about her and, drawing nearer, searched the faces of strangers. She began to wonder. The man she remembered had been square-faced, heavy-browed, his beard nicely scissored, and black. His eyes were brown, or were they black? In Chelmsford he had held his hat in his hand; his hair had been pushed back and was* thining at the temples. His pronounced brow; that had been the distinguishing feature, how it dominated the face overshadowing mouth and jaw. But out of doors all the men wore hats and most had beards of the same fashionable cut as Stearforth’s. Her confidence in finding the man she sought faltered.

  She began an aimless patrol of the bookstalls and then moved up on the church porch where there was so great a multitude she could hardly penetrate it. It was supper time and the porch was a convenient meeting place for gentlemen bent on an evening’s adventure in the darkening city where the only lights, except for heaven’s, were borne in one’s own hand. But nowhere in the crowd did she see a face that she would swear was Stearforth’s.

  Close to despair and concerned about the gathering darkness, she saw a beggar standing by the church door. As she approached, she saw he was a young man with only one leg and his right arm was withered. He was propped up against the wall like a broom. She wondered how he managed to get around.

  She put a few pennies in his outstretched hand and he thanked her.

  “God bless you,” she said, lingering in front of him. “I wonder if you could help me.”

  The beggar, who was very dirty and had a face so covered with boils and pustules that she thought they must surely cause him pain, had taken the coins and put them inside his tattered cloak. He looked up expectantly.

  “What you will, ma’am.”

  “I’m looking for a man. His name is Humphrey Stearforth.”

  The beggar’s face took on a puzzled expression. “I know no o
ne by that name.”

  “He’s a tall man with sable beard, beetle-browed somewhat, a good dresser, a great talker.”

  The beggar laughed. “You’ve described half the gentlemen that haunt these precincts. What do you want of him?”

  “For a piece of work,” she said, taken by surprise at the directness of the question but supplying a plausible answer in an instant.

  “A piece of work,” nodded the begger sagely. “Mark you, if it’s the kind of work I suppose it is, there’s a plenty of young men who’ll do it and ask not the reason but only a fee.”

  “I suspect Stearforth is such a man,” Joan said, “if I could but find him.”

  “Now failing that,” said the beggar, “you might consider an alternative.”

  “Alternative?”

  “I mean another handy gentleman looking for a cure for idleness. Would this work be of a legal nature, may I ask?”

  “Oh, I need no lawyer,” Joan said, thinking she had had quite enough of that breed since Christmas when she and Matthew were enmeshed in the murders at the Middle Temple.

  “A soldier then,” said the beggar, making a little motion of his hand as though he were thrusting with a knife.

  “No, I would describe him as an intelligencer. One quick of wit, fleet of foot, not overly scrupulous, and totally devoted to whoever pays his fee.”

  The beggar laughed. “Now that sounds as much like a lawyer as any other profession, but since you declare you will have none of that kind, I think I have a man who might serve your turn, and if does not he can name twenty more that shall. Indeed, he may even know this Stearforth of whom you speak, since he would seem to be of the same tribe.”

  Joan asked the man’s name and where he might be found.

  “Why, his name is Moseby. He will do anything for money, anything or I am no true man but a skulking dog. Moseby can be found here of days, and some evenings. Although I

  haven’t seen him around this even. Try in the afternoons. He rises late from his bed and then comes to Paul’s to search out invitations to supper.”

  “How will I know this Moseby?”

  “Trust me to point him out. I swear he makes his dinner of pigeon droppings, then stands about looking as though he had business. He has one good suit which he wears from one month to the next, a surly manner, but he knows how to do work and keep his mouth shut and in his trade that’s practically everything.”

  “Moseby, you said? Does he have a Christian name?”

  “Moseby is the only name I know him by and consider myself fortunate to know that, for he’s not of a mind to tell his name to many.”

  “I lay at the Rose, under the name of Mistress Gray,” Joan said. She gave the beggar another tuppence and decided that she had made an ally in her quest. If Moseby was the man the beggar said he was he was likely to know Stearforth.

  She returned to the Blue Boar, told the innkeeper she must return to Chelmsford, and went directly to the Rose, a smaller Inn not far from Paul’s. She took a chamber and told the innkeeper her husband was arriving by ship within a few days and would call for her. She told the lie with a lump in her throat. God knew whether she would see Matthew in a few days or ever, for although he was but a few miles away he might as well have been in France for all the loneliness she felt.

  Matthew had protested all the way back to his cell that he was innocent, but his guard merely assured him that all accused murders professed the same and he should hardly distinguish himself by such a plea. “Now if you would stand out, fellow, admit you are guilty as sin. Make peace with heaven, if not with man, and be done with this noxious caterwauling.”

  “I saw the man I am supposed to have murdered in the

  magistrate’s chamber,” Matthew said as the jailer ushered him into his cell and slammed the iron door behind him.

  The jailer laughed. “It was a ghost, you saw. Then that proves your guilt. No ghosts haunt the innocent.”

  “But he wasn't Graham, don’t you see?” Matthew yelled after the fleeing form of the jailer. “He was an imposter. The imposter was in the judge’s chamber. It was a trap to get me ' to come to London, to put me in the place where—”

  He stopped when he realized that the jailer was gone. And that he was not alone in the cell. He turned around to see the other prisoner, his new cellmate, Matthew presumed.

  “Thomas Buck,” said the man, who was taller than Matthew, trimmer and younger, with a carefully cropped beard but in ragged clothes. He spoke with a London accent and his speech was clear and deliberate and his eyes had the expression of one who had not been imprisoned for a long time.

  Buck extended his hand for Matthew to shake, and seeing no reason not to, Matthew complied. He felt the soft flesh. Buck was a gentleman, despite his garb, an impression further enhanced by the smooth lines of the man’s face.

  “With what are you charged?” asked Buck.

  “Murder,” said Matthew. “Falsely.”

  He watched Buck’s face to see his response, expecting disbelief of the sort the jailer had displayed.

  “I believe it,” said Buck. Buck sat down on the stone floor and motioned Matthew to join him. “I am in the same position. Falsely accused by my wife’s brother.”

  “Of murder?” asked Matthew.

  “Theft. The swine said I took certain goods of his, which I believe he never had. He has always hated me, ever since I married his sister and she died shortly thereafter.”

  Matthew was curious to know how the wife had died, but was thinking how to ask when Buck supplied the answer as though he read Matthew’s mind.

  “Of sickness—a fever. It struck one day and she was buried the next. She was round with our child at the time.” Buck’s voice broke in the telling of his misery. Matthew, who

  was suspicious before, now felt more at ease with his fellow sufferer.

  “Tell me your story,” Buck said.

  Matthew did. He told Buck all about the parson who had come to Chelmsford who was no parson at all, who was an imposter whom he had seen only an hour before in the magistrate’s chamber mocking as Matthew was arraigned.

  “So the real parson never came, then?” said Buck.

  “I met him first when he lay dead and bleeding in the church belfry. My own knife lay a few feet away. My initial was etched in the haft. The curate was in my company when I found the body. He raised the hue and cry against me and there was another man, a pocky old fellow with white hair and villainous eye who I think was the sexton of the church. He falsely said he saw me do the murder, but before God, I never did. The sexton lied.”

  “Why should he do that?” Buck asked.

  “Why? Who knows—perhaps he did the murder himself, or was paid by the real murderer to accuse me.”

  Buck thought for a minute then said, “Well, Matthew, if I can be so bold as to address you by your Christian name, you’ve made a believer out of me. Your story has the honest ring of truth in every part. I don’t wonder the magistrate was taken in by this wealth of specious evidence. It was even so in my own case.”

  “Why how was that?” asked Matthew, interested.

  “My brother-in-law suborned witnesses against me. He found a shopkeeper in Chelsea who claimed I brought the stolen goods to him to sell them, which thing I never did since there were never any goods to steal, much less sell. But I will make myself free of these charges in good time and live to see all of my accusers hanged for their perjury.”

  Buck nodded his head confidently and stared off at the stone wall opposite him. Matthew couldn’t resist asking his new cellmate how this turn in his fortunes was to be effected.

  In responding, Buck lowered his voice as though he feared the jailer might be lurking in the passage beyond and said, “I’ve had good advice.”

  “From whom?”

  “Why a friend, a friend who knows how to deal with these magistrates and jailers, who understands the game, so to speak.”

  Matthew wondered that Buck could so casually dismiss
his predicament as a game. Theft was as much a hanging offense as murder. The young man and Matthew shared the same fate if they could not refute their accusers.

  “I am not going to deny my guilt,” said Buck after a few moments of silence.

  “Not deny it? Then how do you intend to be free of the charge.”

  “A trade, friend Matthew, a simple trade.” Buck turned to Matthew and looked at him intently. There was so little light in the cell that Matthew could not detect the man’s eyes but they seemed at the moment especially large and luminous with practical wisdom. “My brother-in-law is a wealthy man, whose wealth is gotten in part by avoidance of certain taxes and impositions he is ever at pains to keep concealed. Therefore, have I been advised by this friend I mention, to offer in exchange for my own liberty information about my brother-in-law to damn him in the eyes of the law and draw into the same net a dozen seeming-honest citizens of the town whose private dealings would not stand up to scrutiny. Which information I am prepared to give. In return I will walk out a free man and my brother-in-law and his henchmen can go to hell.”

  Matthew heard this plan with no little admiration for the planner. It was certainly logical, and it had an element of justice in it, for the malicious brother-in-law and his accomplices would get their deserts for their perjuries. What the magistrate could not correct because of his inability to see into the human heart, the accused man would rectify by a simple negotiation—a lie for a lie—and somehow the result would be a higher truth.

  Or would it?

  Matthew was pondering that question when his fellow inmate spoke again.