A Fall of Shadows Read online

  “Because of the endless trouble you cause me.”

  “I see, Kit, you intend to torture me forever about Frances’s plans.”

  Who is Frances? thought Bess.

  Kit Harwoode shot a look at his cousin. “Ah, Mistress Ellyott, my cousin’s comment reminds me that I have a favor to ask. What are you plans for tomorrow evening?”

  * * *

  “He requested that you join him and his family at a supper tomorrow?” Joan set the plate of parsnips and boiled ling on the table unfolded before the hall windows. The sun cast long shadows across the courtyard, and Humphrey was encouraging the last of the chickens to return to their shelter before night fell.

  “He did,” said Bess, draping her table napkin over her left arm. “I wonder if I should have refused.”

  “You did not?”

  “No, I did not. Not after his cousin added his voice to the request. Further, I find I am most curious why he wishes me to be there. He chose to not explain.” Thinking she heard the sound of feet on the winding stairs, Bess looked up from the steaming food toward the doorway that led onto the lobby and the staircase. But no one appeared at the entrance. “Joan, you did tell Ellyn that she is welcome to come down to join me, did you not?”

  “Aye, Mistress, but she has been most downcast today. She would not eat the dinner I prepared for her this noontime and said she’d rather remain in her chamber. She begs your understanding.”

  “She is not sick-feeling again, is she?”

  “No, Mistress. Merely dispirited,” said Joan, refilling Bess’s mug of weak ale. “And I have removed any sharp objects from her bedchamber.”

  “Most wise.”

  Bess ate in silence while Joan tended to the hall fire, the branches crackling and popping as they burned.

  “She must dread leaving us, Mistress, for she has to suspect she cannot stay with us much longer.” Joan set aside the iron poker and got to her feet. “She has ceased bleeding, and she is now strong enough to go.”

  “Mayhap we can allow her to stay. For a short while, at least.” Though it was not Bess’s place to extend the invitation; ’twould be Robert’s. “She has a keen interest in herbs and simples. I would like to teach her, and help her find a place with someone in need of a woman with such knowledge. Presuming, that is, she can convince Master Poynard to relinquish his plan to wed her.”

  “Methinks, Mistress, the wrong man died.” Joan collected Bess’s empty bowl and returned to the kitchen.

  Bess ate but did not taste the food as she pondered what could be done with Ellyn Merrick. Finished with her meal, she did not wait for Joan to fetch the dishes. Her servant was not in the kitchen, so she placed them near the sink used to wash the plates and pots. On Joan’s worktable, the thorn that had fallen from the poppet yet laid atop its surface. Joan would never discard it, for that would require touching the thing.

  Bess picked it up and returned to the hall, retaking her seat at the table. The spine was from a hawthorn and quite long, the length of her thumb. She tested its sharpness with the tip of her finger and was rewarded with a prick of blood. When she was a child, a hawthorn had grown near the door of her family’s house in Oxford. Her father had wished to remove the plant, as Bess and her siblings were ever slicing themselves on the thorns. Her mother, though, would not allow him to tear out the shrub. She loved its white, sweet-scented blossoms and argued that it was well known that digging up a hawthorn brought ill fortune. So it stayed and continued to cut them until Bess and the others learned better to avoid the plant.

  Bess turned the thorn in her fingers. “If this were any longer, it could make a weapon.”

  Her grandmother’s book of recipes for simples had warned against using any part of the hawthorn to concoct cures, though, for infusions made from the plant could cause some folks’ hearts to beat erratically.

  “Whom were you meant to harm by being thrust into that poppet, thorn?”

  This time when Bess heard steps on the staircase, she glanced up to see Dorothie entering the hall. Having no gown other than the one she’d arrived in yesterday, she had pulled it on again to wear. She had removed her bum roll and petticoats, however, leaving the skirt to drag on the room’s woven rush matting.

  “Dorothie, you look so tired,” said Bess, setting down the thorn. “You should return to your home where your servant can tend properly to you.”

  “You fret for me, Elizabeth?” She lowered herself onto the chair opposite Bess’s. “When have you ever done so before?”

  “You are my sister. Certes, I fret for you,” she said. “Are you hungry? I can fetch Joan to bring you food.”

  “No need. I have no appetite.” Dorothie eyed the thorn. “What have you there?”

  “A spine from a hawthorn.”

  “Whyever have you that? They are like daggers.” Dorothie flicked it with her fingernail. “I do so hate them. Father should have been rid of that shrub at our old house, but Mother’s pleas could not be ignored.”

  “I found the thorn in a most curious place, and I was intrigued by it.”

  “They are dangerous. But what care you about warnings from me? You do not ever listen.”

  “Come now, Dorothie, I do.”

  “When? When do you listen? Bah,” said Dorothie. “But seeing that thorn makes me recall an aged fellow here—’twas years before you arrived in this village, Elizabeth—a cottager who suffered greatly from the prick of a hawthorn spine. The skin around the wound swelled and turned red, and he was in such pain. ’Twas only through the aid of a local healer that he recovered.”

  “How intriguing,” said Bess, her thoughts swirling.

  “To think that the fellow’s illness was caused by the pricking of a thorn,” mused her sister. “Almost like a poison, it was.”

  * * *

  “Mistress Grocer, it is late.” Kit had left the tavern with Gibb after their supper and had spotted the rotund shape of the town grocer’s wife pacing before the doorstep of his house.

  “I must speak with you, Constable,” she said.

  “Come in from the street, Mistress.”

  Kit opened the door and showed her into the entry passage. The various items that hung from her girdle—keys, a small mirror, a brass toothpick on a long chain—clanked together as she walked.

  “How can I help you at this hour?” he asked.

  She pressed her hands together at her waist. “The fine you have levied against my husband, Constable, cannot be paid. We have not the funds.”

  “Then perhaps you should tell your husband that the weights he uses should not be lighter than indicated by the marks upon them,” answered Kit. “He cheats your customers.”

  “’Tis not my good husband! ’Tis our apprentice. The vile, dishonest creature,” she exclaimed. “He pockets the profits.”

  “It is your husband’s responsibility and yours, Mistress Grocer, to govern your apprentices.”

  She jutted her heavy chin. “The boy has been soundly beaten.”

  Kit could just imagine. “Pay the fine by sunset tomorrow, Mistress Grocer, and I’ll not increase it.” Kit brushed by her and went back outside. He waited for her to follow; she halted at the threshold of his front door.

  “Have you another concern, Mistress?”

  “My husband and me … we did wonder when you will be bringing in the witch to be hung.”

  Not this again. “There is no witch hereabouts, Mistress Grocer.”

  She lurched forward with a clanking and clattering of the items on her belt. “But there is! I saw her myself by the market cross. Not long afore Old Jellis was found dead! Creeping about. The hag. Bent over and wrapped in her cloaks and clouts.”

  “Merely an aging countrywoman, Mistress Grocer. We have a few of those around here.”

  “Nay! ’Twas the witch. Only a woman with wicked intents would be creeping about as she was.”

  Someone shouted his name. A young woman in a blue kirtle was running at full tilt toward him, skidding o
n the damp cobbles.

  “Constable!” she shouted again.

  “Excuse me, Mistress Grocer.”

  The woman made no move to leave his side.

  “God have mercy, Constable,” said the girl, halting before him. Tears streamed down her thin cheeks. “Anna. ’Tis Anna!” She pointed toward the lane that wound away from town and past the Merricks’ farm. “The old red cow. I do not understand how, but … Anna!”

  CHAPTER 13

  Bess eased wide the door to the chamber Ellyn borrowed. Curled on her side, she appeared to be asleep, but her eyes opened and she smiled weakly.

  “I did not mean to disturb you,” said Bess. “I only wanted to know if you needed anything.”

  “I am well, Mistress,” Ellyn answered. “The constable was here earlier today. Is not the matter of Bartholomew’s death resolved?”

  “I have learned, Ellyn, that Constable Harwoode is not easily satisfied,” said Bess. “If you are well, I shall leave you to your sleep. I give you good night.”

  Bess closed the door and retreated through the upstairs rooms, weariness bringing on a yawn. She had so much, too much, to fret over. Ellyn’s future plans and the resolution of Master Reade’s murder. The meaning of the poppet and its intended victim. Mother Fletcher’s safety, wherever she had gone. The safety of Bess’s family, the threat Laurence posed—where had he gone?—looming. During the daytime, she could put his letter and the message they had received from Joan’s friend out of her mind. But as evening approached, her fears crept nearer as well.

  A steadying hand pressed to the staircase wall, Bess descended the winding steps. In the hall, the hearth fire crackled.

  Dorothie slouched in Robert’s chair, which she had drawn as near to the hearth as she dared without risking that her skirt might be set alight by an errant spark.

  “You should go to bed, Dorothie,” said Bess, crossing the room.

  “You seek to tell me what I ought do?”

  Why must she ever be so tetchy? “So be it. I merely thought you would be more comfortable abed than slumped upon the cushions of Robert’s chair.”

  Dorothie exhaled and hauled herself to her feet. “I will leave on the morrow, Elizabeth. You are correct. I will be more content at my own home.”

  “Give you good night, sister.”

  “I pray I can sleep for all the troubles that attend my dreams.”

  Bess watched her go and turned back to the hearth. She retrieved the poppet’s thorn from her pocket where she’d tucked it after supper. She tossed it into the flames, hoping the fire would consume it and its evil. However, Dorothie’s words returned to haunt Bess, and she could not toss them into the flames.

  To think that the fellow’s illness was caused by the pricking of a thorn … almost like a poison.

  Could Goodman Jellis have been the cottager Dorothie had remembered? If he was, as Bess’s sister had recalled the prior ill effects of a hawthorn spine, so might others in this village. However, to link his recent death to an earlier affliction brought on by a thorn seemed a most far-fetched idea. And an even more far-fetched means by which to commit murder. Yet …

  A fist pounded on the front door. Joan rushed into the passageway from the kitchen and unlatched it.

  “I need Widow Ellyott,” announced a young woman’s voice. She hiccuped upon a sob. “’Tis most urgent.”

  “Joan, show her in,” called Bess.

  The Merricks’ servant, the gaunt one, hurried into the room behind Joan. Her nose was red-blotched from crying.

  “You must come, Mistress. I am afeard that Anna is dying. Might already be dead.”

  “Did she fall ill again?” asked Bess.

  “Nay. ’Tis not her sickness,” she answered. “Anna was out in the barn, tending to the last of the day’s milking. And the old red cow kicked her.” She paused to scrub tears from her eyes. “Anna must have fallen, and the cow … The cow trampled her in its frenzy. Thomasin found her when Anna did not come for the evening meal. The master sent me to fetch you and the constable, Mistress. Constable Harwoode has gone on to the farm, but I know not if Anna lives, or if she is …”

  She burst into tears, and Joan gathered her close. She gazed at Bess over the top of the girl’s coifed head, her eyes dark with dismay.

  “The poppet, Mistress,” said Joan quietly. “It did bring wickedness to its victim.”

  A victim who wore the blue clothing of a servant, just like the color of the material that had been wrapped around the figure.

  * * *

  An abundance of lanterns had been brought into the barn and hung from overhead beams and stall partitions. The light flicked and danced, making Anna Webb’s chest appear to move with indrawn breaths. But Kit had already knelt alongside her and touched a hand to her face, which was round like an innocent child’s. Her skin had been cold, a dribble of blood leaking from her mouth, and no warm breath exhaled from her nose. For a reason he might not ever be able to explain, he’d removed the bits of straw that had become entangled in her coif and felt a deep sorrow.

  Do not blame yourself, Kit. Her death isn’t your fault.

  “Who found her?” he asked the crowd of servants and numerous Merrick children who had collected inside the barn. Mistress Merrick was not among their number.

  “I did,” said a young woman, pushing her way forward. She wore the simple and sturdy clothes of a servant. She pointed to her chest with a chapped hand. “I am Thomasin. A dairymaid for the Merricks.”

  The woman Bess Ellyott had spied with Jeffrey Poynard. “Tell me what happened as best you can, Thomasin.”

  Her shoulders were back and her gaze direct, confident despite her lowly position. “The cow trampled her.”

  “I want to know all that happened,” he said. “When she was last seen. If any of you noticed someone lurking near this barn or mayhap a stranger on the grounds.”

  The crowd whispered. Thomasin’s brow furrowed. “I do not understand, Constable. ’Twas an accident.”

  “If you would.”

  “I decided to go look for Anna when her supper sat uneaten on the table where the servants gather for meals,” she said. “I could hear the old red cow lowing and shuffling in the stall. When I reached it, I saw Anna upon the ground.”

  Thomasin gave Anna’s body a hasty glance. The girl’s milk pail lay on its side in the corner. The straw that covered the floor was scattered widely, even out into the aisle. Kit did not think the disorder typical. The rest of the barn was carefully maintained.

  “I dragged the cow out of the stall and put the animal in the empty one at the far end of the barn,” she continued, returning her attention to Kit. “I must have cried out loudly, for Master David came running from the house.”

  David Merrick stood at the edge of the crowd, near to the barn door. Heads swiveled to look at him, and he stretched to his full height.

  “I did hear Thomasin’s cry, Constable Harwoode,” he said. “I ran to the barn. I saw that Anna had been gravely hurt. Thomasin was disquieted. I sent our house servant to fetch you and Widow Ellyott.”

  “Has this cow ever hurt anyone before?” Kit asked.

  “She can be uneasy, at times. When unfamiliar folk are near,” Thomasin answered. “Anna was known to the cow, though, and should not have caused the animal to be affrighted. Unless …”

  “Unless what?” asked Kit.

  “Unless she was uncareful,” she said. “Anna was not fully well after her sickness. And she was not pleased that the mistress had roused her from her bed to return to her work.” She looked over at David Merrick. Why? “The mistress had called Anna a slugabed, which vexed her. Further, Mistress Merrick said she’d not pay Anna her wages if she did not earn them. Which is only sensible. Mayhap Anna did not well heed her tasks. Mayhap she angered the cow somehow.”

  “But Anna was never uncareful,” said a lad huddled among the children. His resemblance to David Merrick was such that Kit presumed the boy to be his young brother. “And if she
was mispleased, ’twas because of something you said to her.”

  The older girl at his side kicked him, causing him to yelp in pain. She then grabbed his elbow and hauled him from the barn.

  Kit waited until the murmur his words had created eased. “When was the last time anyone saw Anna Webb alive?”

  Those who remained in the barn exchanged glances. A handful shrugged.

  “I had to have been the last one, Constable,” said Thomasin. “An hour or so before sunset. When I had finished my work in here and went to the cheese barn.”

  “Did you notice anyone enter or depart this barn during that time? Or see someone in the yard who shouldn’t have been there?”

  “No one killed Anna, Constable. What an idea to think so!” David Merrick attempted a disdainful chuckle, which faded when none of the rest joined him.

  “My thanks, Thomasin,” said Kit. “Master Merrick, I would have you send for the coroner, if you have not already.”

  “He be coming soon, Constable,” said one of the servants. “I ran to tell him meself.”

  Just then, Mistress Ellyott swept into the barn. Her gaze took in the others gathered inside, then moved to meet Kit’s. “I am too late. Jesu, I am too late.”

  * * *

  Constable Harwoode had ordered everyone besides Bess to leave the barn. To her surprise, they had all rapidly obeyed.

  She knelt in the straw next to Anna. The constable leaned against the enclosure’s wall, buffing the knuckles of his right hand down the length of his clipped dark beard.

  “Well?” he asked.

  “She does have injuries on her torso,” she said, securing the ties of the dairymaid’s bodice, which she had undone. “It could be just as you say Thomasin described. The cow became agitated, kicked out, and trampled Anna when she fell.”

  “Nonetheless, I mislike this,” he said.

  “Joan thinks the poppet I found was a curse meant for Anna. The blue material wrapped around it is like the kirtle she wore.” The common color of a servant’s dress. “Further, I did find the figure not far from this very barn.”