A Fall of Shadows Read online

  A FALL OF SHADOWS

  A BESS ELLYOTT MYSTERY

  Nancy Herriman

  To all my readers, whose kind words encourage me, I offer my deepest thanks

  CHAPTER 1

  October 1593

  Wiltshire, England

  She was running, the uneven cobbles beneath her feet slick with damp and filth, her hair unbound and tangling in her eyes. Tears streamed down her face for the husband, dead from poison, she’d left behind in their hall. Around her, the houses closed in, leaned over her head as if they might topple to suffocate her. He was behind her, chasing. The man who had killed Martin. She could hear him, his breathing, his footfalls. “Bess,” he called. “I come for you.”

  Shadows twisted and leapt. A torch flared. A cat darted across the lane. A lane so narrow she could touch the cob walls on either side, should she reach out. She tried to run faster, but her feet dragged as though mired in mud. She dared look back. He was not there. Instead, she saw a crone. A haggard old woman loomed out of the darkness, her skin marked and shriveled by her evil. She laughed, but it was no laugh of humor. “Bess …”

  “Bess.”

  With a start, Bess Ellyott awoke, the beamed ceiling of her chamber in Wiltshire overhead. Far from the shadowed streets of London where fear stalked her.

  Her brother, Robert, leaned into view. “God mend me, Bess, you sleep deeply.” His eyes were a gentle brown like her own and, at the moment, filled with fretfulness. “Are you unwell?”

  “I am well, Robin.” Her pet name for him. “’Twas merely an unhappy dream.”

  “Your husband comes to you in your sleep,” he said.

  “Nay, not Martin.” But the man who’d killed her husband had. And a witch.

  Robert’s forehead creased, and she lifted her hand to brush his cheek. The stubble of his beard was rough against her fingertips. His face had many furrows. They had both suffered the sting of loss in recent years. Spouses. Children.

  “I’faith, I am well,” she said, smiling to ease his concerns. She would not be the cause of more furrows upon his face. Though he was several years older—were those flecks of gray among the brown hair at his temple?—Robert had always been her boon companion, her loyal champion. Her most beloved brother.

  She elbowed herself upright. “What hour is it?” Robert had pushed aside her bed curtains, and save for the light shed by the candle he’d brought with him, her chamber was dark. “Do you leave so early for London? The sun is not yet up. Surely your affairs can wait a few hours longer.”

  “Humphrey believes it is set to rain soon. He’d not have me travel on muddy roads and lengthen an already long journey.”

  “Your manservant frets for you worse than our old cook used to do. Worse than I do.” As if that were possible.

  Yawning, she reached for her night-rail to draw over her linen shift.

  “You need not arise, Bess.”

  “I am awake and would see you off.”

  Robert stepped aside as she swung her legs over the thick feather mattress and slid her feet into the slippers that waited on the floor. A draft chilled her bare ankles.

  “You travel so often these days, Robin. It seems you are not ever here any longer.” Did she sound pitiful? She hoped not. But her dream had left her with a terrible sense of foreboding, and she did not want him to leave.

  “You know I must go to London. My business affairs there require my attention.”

  “I do understand,” she said, hugging her night-rail about her body. “At least take some crushed seeds of bishop’s weed as a safeguard against the plague that remains in the city.”

  “Aye, Bess,” he replied lightly. “As you command.”

  “Will you be gone long?”

  “Long enough, I expect, for you to bring yourself into trouble.” His face settled into sober lines. “Elizabeth, be careful. Do not become involved in others’ problems. You are too compassionate for your own good.”

  He only called her Elizabeth when he sought to scold her.

  However, she’d had good reason to become involved last time, as he well knew. “I’faith, you would not wish me to be otherwise, would you?”

  “Be careful, Elizabeth,” he repeated.

  She wished she could promise that she would be careful and all would be well while he was gone.

  But no promise rose to her lips when she feared the opposite.

  * * *

  “Here, Constable. Here.”

  The farm owner, his thick-soled shoes squelching across the wet meadow, scurried ahead of Kit Harwoode. Upon a nearby rise, the man’s shepherd, in his coarse frieze tunic and woolen stockings that sagged about his knees, leaned against his staff and watched them. A handful of dead sheep lay nearby.

  The farm owner pointed at the animals. “See? I have lost these, and near to half my flock is ailing.”

  Kit eyed the sheep. “It’s not unusual for sheep to die from worms of the liver in late autumn, Goodman Cox,” he said. “My uncle had many of his animals die at this time last year.”

  “But why are only my sheep perishing this year? The Reades have not had any of their flock die, and their farm abuts mine,” he replied. “None of your sheep are dead, either.”

  True. “There has been no crime committed. I do not know why you sent for me.”

  The man sniffed. “’Tis the witch’s fault.”

  Damn.

  Kit thought—not for the first time—that when he’d had the chance, he should have insisted the burgesses not select him to be constable. He had his own lands and sheep to mind, and he’d not be expected to hunt down a superstitious farmer’s supposed witch. Here he was, though, and he would not ever recant the promise he’d made to fulfill his duties.

  Yet … damn.

  “The witch, Goodman Cox?”

  “Aye. She cursed my flock, Constable Harwoode.” He stretched his neck above his sweat-stained ruff and frowned. “You must arrest her and see her punished.”

  “There are no witches in this village,” said Kit.

  “But there are,” announced the shepherd, who’d till then been scratching his hip in boredom. “The old woman what lives in the cob cottage.” He pointed his staff toward a spot in the distance.

  Kit was familiar with the woman, a frail aging widow who’d outlived not only her husband but her children as well. Dependent upon others to support her, she lived quietly. But not quietly enough for some, it seemed.

  “Why accuse her?” he asked.

  “Why?” asked the farm owner. “Ever since she walked along the road near my pastures two weeks ago, my animals have been weak and will not eat. And now this.” He nodded at the dead sheep. He turned back to Kit with raised brows, as though he’d proved his point and expected Kit to agree.

  “Walking along a road is not a crime, either,” he said.

  The man’s face reddened. “You will not see her punished.”

  Kit gripped the hilt of his dagger, slung from his belt. “Tend to your other animals, Goodman Cox, and have these buried immediately.”

  The man’s mouth fell open. Kit turned and strode toward the road.

  “She must be punished, Constable,” Goodman Cox called after him. “Before worse happens!”

  * * *

  “Such a horrid dream it was, Joan,” said Bess to her servant, who was seated by the courtyard-facing hall window brushing dirt from the hem of one of Bess’s gowns. Joan had been too busy all that day for Bess to tell her about the dream earlier.

  I should not have burdened her with it now, either.

  But she trusted Joan’s counsel, for she was more friend than servant. They’d fled London together and had come to Wiltshire to begin anew in the safety of Robert’s home. Joan was strong, the
scar on her cheek that peeped now from beneath her coif an outward sign of what she’d endured before Bess had taken her in. Proof of the courage that Bess knew lived within.

  “What do you think it means that I dreamt of a witch, though?” Bess did not ask Joan why she’d dreamt of Laurence; he often haunted her thoughts, both night and day, despite the miles that stretched between them. She’d discovered his treason, but her husband had paid the price for her knowledge.

  “’Tis unchancy, I would say, Mistress,” said Joan, holding up the skirt to examine her handiwork. She shifted the hem to a new spot and continued brushing. “Ill-boding.”

  Bess could not dispute the claim when she agreed.

  “Mayhap my sleep was unsound because I fret over Robert’s departure this morning, which has upset my thoughts and peace. That is all,” said Bess, movement in the courtyard catching her eye.

  “Ill-boding,” Joan repeated above the scratch of bristles across the deep-green kersey. The gown was Bess’s warmest, and with winter approaching, she’d have need of it.

  Bess stepped nearer the hall window and peered through the wavy glass. A spurt of rain flowed in rivulets down the panes, further distorting the view. Foul weather had arrived at midday, spreading damp across the chalk hills and into the village. As befitted a successful merchant, Robert’s two-story house was solid, with thick stone walls at the ground level and good glazed windows. The dampness seeped inside anyway.

  Hugging her arms at her waist, Bess squinted past the rainfall. “What is Humphrey about in the courtyard?”

  “He has been hanging crosses made from elder branches upon the outbuildings to protect his chickens.”

  “Protect them from what?”

  Joan’s brush paused. “Evil. Disease,” she said. “Witches.”

  My dream. “Have the chickens need of such protection?”

  “It is said in the market that sheep are dying, Mistress,” said Joan. “The old woman who lives off the lane past the bend has been accused of bewitching them.”

  Bess knew of the woman Joan meant. “Mother Fletcher is but an impoverished widow who keeps her own quarter. No one has need to fear her.”

  “The townsfolk are quick to mislike an old widowed woman who lives alone, Mistress.”

  “The townsfolk are always quick to mislike and mistrust,” said Bess. Too often whispers and scrutiny accompanied her as she moved through town. A widow who made physic. Suspicious. “Mother Fletcher is harmless.”

  “As you say, Mistress.”

  Robert’s manservant moved to the last door along the length of the outbuilding that stretched from the rear of the house.

  “We should be thankful my sister is away.” Dorothie and her daughter had left the village to visit her mother-in-law. To grieve together over the tragic murder of Dorothie’s husband. The solution of that crime was the “problem” Bess had involved herself in when Robert had last gone to London. “She would be in a panic and insist Humphrey hang witch guards at her house as well.”

  “I can tell him you wish him to stop, Mistress.”

  “No, Joan. If hanging his witch safeguards makes Humphrey happy, I’ll not stop him.”

  A rap sounded on the street-side door. Joan set down her work and went to answer the knock. She returned quickly. “You are summoned to the dairy east of town, Mistress. The family has need of your healing. The Merricks.”

  “The Merricks? They have never sent for me before.”

  Their house and its barns stood atop a low hill overlooking the road and meadows thick with cows. She had admired the whitewashed buildings when Robert had once taken her past them on their way to Avebury. They had gone to the town to marvel at its stone henge as well as to visit a distant cousin who lived there. A festive time that made Bess miss her brother afresh.

  “Did the messenger say who is ill and what is the matter?” she asked.

  “’Tis one of their dairymaids, Mistress. Vomiting, he says. Pains in her stomach. Some palsy, also.”

  “’Tis a mile walk. I should get underway if I’m to return before sunset,” said Bess. “I shall need my mixture of organy and mint to soothe her, Joan. Collect it while I fetch my heavy-soled mules and my cloak.”

  “Mayhap you should take a bundle of rue as well, Mistress.”

  “Rue will aggravate the upset of the girl’s stomach, not calm it, Joan.”

  “That is not why I suggest you do so, Mistress,” she said. “You should take it for protection.”

  The look on her servant’s face was more alarming than Bess’s discomfiting dream. “Against witches.”

  “Sheep have died and now a girl in a nearby farm has fallen ill,” Joan pointed out. “What or who might next be struck down?”

  * * *

  A handful of rue leaves tucked into the pocket slung from her tape girdle, Bess set out for the Merricks’. By the time she arrived, the rain had stopped and snippets of blue sky showed between the clouds. She climbed the path leading to their house. Its ground floor was built of sturdy stone, and the timber frames of the upper floor had faded to a soft gray made softer by the thin late-afternoon light. Barns that sheltered the cows and where the cheese was made spread out behind the farmhouse on either side. A woman stood outside the house’s open front door, her hands clasped over the apron tied around her thick waist.

  Spying Bess, she nodded, then called to someone inside the house. “The healer is here. And see that the children stay away from that girl’s chamber.”

  “God save you, Widow Ellyott,” she said in greeting, “for coming so speedily. I am Agnes Merrick.”

  The lines that creased her eyes and her mouth suggested to Bess that she was about forty years of age. The thickness of her waist came from being with child. Four or five months so, if Bess were to hazard a guess. The woman had loosened her bodice strings and sewn an unmatched fabric panel into the skirt of her gown to accommodate the coming swell, but the extra material would not prove adequate for long.

  “God save you, Mistress Merrick.”

  The woman gestured Bess out of the wind. The shadows of the entry passage were deep, and Bess paused to allow her eyes to adjust to the dimness. A narrow beam of light streamed through the doorway between the corridor and the hall. Within the room, a scrawny servant girl dressed in blue set pewter upon a massive oak table in preparation for their evening meal. When she did not think her mistress would notice, she snuck glances at Bess.

  “I apologize that I did not come more quickly,” said Bess. “My brother has taken our only horse to London, so I had to walk.”

  “If my eldest daughter were here, I’d not have need of your help. She is far more skilled with herbs and simples than I. But she …” The woman’s mouth pinched with annoyance. The motion deepened the lines around her lips and explained why those lines existed to begin with. “No matter. You have come, and we are grateful. I will take you to the girl. But first …”

  Mistress Merrick gestured at Bess’s mud-caked mules. Bess slipped them off her shoes, setting them atop the dense thatch of rushes that covered the entry area floor. At the end of the passage, the woman led Bess up a spiraling flight of steps, which creaked beneath the weight of their feet. The staircase opened onto a first-floor room that had been built to serve as a parlor or private hall but now held beds and chests. The minty aroma of pennyroyal, scattered about in hopes the herb would ward off fleas, scented the air.

  A boy with Mistress Merrick’s same blunt nose bolted from a far room and skittered past Bess. Avoiding his mother’s gaze, he headed for the stairs. His arrival downstairs was met by a girl’s angry shouts, followed by silence.

  “I have put her back here.” Mistress Merrick crossed to a narrow door that led to a series of chambers built above the ground-floor service rooms. The farther they walked, the danker and more shadowed the chambers became. “I feared contagion and sought to keep her away from the rest of the family and the other servants.”

  At least she’d not left the girl t
o suffer in one of the rooms likely to be found out in the barns. Which might, in truth, be warmer than these chambers.

  “What is her name?” asked Bess.

  “Anna Webb.” Mistress Merrick guided Bess through another door. “She has only been with us a year.”

  “Has she been ill like this before?”

  “No,” she said. “I thought her a sturdy girl, which is why we took her on. Thanked be God the greatest part of the cheesemaking is finished for the year. My husband has gone off to the fair with two of our boys to sell what we produced this summer. Five hundredweight they’re taking. A good year.”

  They entered the last chamber in the line, danker and darker than all the rest. Its regular life was as a storage room, if the stacked table boards, parts of bedsteads, tubs, and chipped crocks were any indication. Someone had placed a squat truckle bed in the corner. The young woman upon it lay on her side, her flaxen hair stuck to her damp forehead. A wood bucket, stinking from its contents, sat on the floor nearby.

  “Anna,” said Mistress Merrick, venturing no nearer than the doorstead. “The healer has come.”

  Anna moaned and peered at Bess with bloodshot eyes. “Who?”

  Bess set down her satchel of physic. “Let us open the window.”

  “But it is most cool outside,” argued Mistress Merrick. “The air will harm the girl.”

  “No more than the fetid air in here.” Bess unlatched the narrow window. “And prithee have your servant girl refresh the bucket.”

  Mistress Merrick happily departed, leaving Bess alone with the girl.

  “Anna, you have been unwell?” she asked.

  “My stomach. I feel most poorly. I am so very tired.” She pinched her lips together. Were her face not sallow from her sickness, she would be quite fair. “I was in good health this morning, but after dinner I became ill.”

  She grimaced and clutched at her stomach. But she did not retch. Perhaps the worst of her sickness had passed.

  Bess untied her satchel and removed the sealed jar containing her physic. She poured the liquid into a small ceramic cup Joan had also packed. “I have brought you physic to ease your nausea.”