A Fall of Shadows Read online

  His fingers stilled their motion. “Or Anna was meant to believe she was cursed. A distraction while she milked a peevish cow.”

  Anna’s left arm sprawled across the straw, and Bess moved it to the dead girl’s side. Anna had rolled up her sleeves to prepare for milking, and her skin’s chill made Bess tremble. She had touched others who’d died before; her husband and two young daughters were just three among too many. However, each time Bess felt the cold of death upon another’s flesh, she would shudder anew.

  I shall never become accustomed to the feeling.

  “What is that?” asked the constable, who’d bent down while Bess was contemplating her miseries.

  “What?” she asked.

  “That mark. On her arm.”

  Bess searched for what he meant and spotted the line of red across Anna’s forearm.

  He knelt beside her and lifted the girl’s arm. The line of red was longer and darker than Bess had first noticed in the light of the lantern hanging from the wall.

  “It does not look like the mark from a cow’s hoof,” he said.

  “Are you certain, Constable?” she asked, though the line was too broad for what might be left by the edge of a hoof.

  “I knew a man who’d returned from war with a healed wound on his forearm,” he said, gently resting Anna’s arm at her side once more. “He’d received it while defending himself against an opponent wielding a sword. Luckily for him, the sword was dull and his surcoat was thickly padded. His scar was much like her bruise in size and shape.”

  “You believe someone hit her, Constable, and that she raised her arm to fend off the blows?”

  “I do,” he said. “It wasn’t an accident with a cow that felled her, Mistress.”

  He rose and left the stall. Bess leaned through the opening and watched as he scanned the contents of the barn.

  “Ah.” He bent to retrieve an item in the far corner near the door. He lifted a long, thick wooden rod for her to see. “A prod.”

  Such as the dairymaids would use to move the cattle between fields or to encourage them to return to the barn.

  “Think you that is the weapon that made the mark upon her arm?” she asked.

  “Let me demonstrate.” He gripped it with both hands and swung. “He swings and strikes her. She lifts her arm to fend off the blow, but the impact staggers her and she falls to the ground near to the cow. The animal, startled, treads on her, killing her.”

  “This does make good sense, Constable. But another murder … it does not bear thinking.” How many might there be before they saw the end of this?

  He rested the prod at his side. “I could believe a witch’s curse struck Anna down,” he said, the look on his face somber. “Would you prefer that to be the cause of her death, Mistress?”

  * * *

  Early the next morning, Kit stood before the out-jetting window of the Merricks’ parlor, his hands clasped behind his back. His impatience at being made to wait was raising his ire. When he’d been shown into this drafty room instead of the hall, he should have realized neither Mistress Merrick nor her son intended to make him welcome.

  The window, though, did have a beautiful if glass-distorted view across the vale and onto the hills beyond. Clouds cast a patchwork of light and shadow on the fading green. He unlatched the central casement and pushed it open. From here, where the Merricks’ home stood atop a knoll, the highway was readily visible in both directions. If he leaned through the opening, he could even make out the stand of trees that surrounded the old fort hill. The druids’ mound.

  A breeze rattled a bundle of leaves nailed to the topmost wooden transom of the window. He reached around the casement and grabbed them. The leaves of an elder tree. He’d noticed a similar bundle nailed to the lintel above the front door as well. Some believed elder leaves kept witches’ charms from entering the house. Had they been nailed there before or after Anna died?

  Children’s voices shouted in a nearby room, then fell quiet. Soon after, Mistress Merrick stepped into the parlor.

  “I do not mean to cause you to wait, Constable Harwoode.” She glanced at the leaves he held. “My husband and sons have yet to return from the fair, and all the work and discipline fall to me.”

  “And to your son David,” he said, tossing the leaves out the window.

  “And to David.” She crossed the room, more quickly than many women heavy with child might, reached for the casement latch, and shut the window. “My son thought you might return to speak with us.”

  “I have more questions about Anna Webb.”

  “The girl is to be buried in the churchyard tomorrow. The deodand fee will be paid to the Crown, as is required to atone for the cow bringing to pass her death,” she said. She had a way of pressing her lips together that wrinkled her skin, aging her. “We have done our duty.”

  “So you have,” he said.

  “What more, then, need you to know?”

  “There were marks on Anna’s body. Fresh marks.” Last night, Bess Ellyott had searched for more and found another on Anna’s shoulder. “From being struck with the cattle prod, I believe.”

  She momentarily pressed her lips together again. “Anna angered the cow and it trampled her. It caused those marks.”

  “Had the animal harmed anyone before?”

  “God did not give cattle sense and reason, Constable. They are easily startled and act without thought,” she said. “And yestereven …’twas most strange. An unrest hung over the house like a thick cloud. I could sense its evil. Mayhap the animal did as well.”

  “Is that why you hang elder leaves on your lintel and windows?” he asked. “Do you think the cow was cursed by a witch? Mayhap the same one who left a poppet in your yard not long before Anna died?”

  “A poppet in our yard?”

  “Just so.”

  “I heard nothing of a witch’s effigy. God protect us,” she said.

  “Since I persist in my belief that Anna’s death was no accident,” said Kit, “I must ask if you saw anyone near the barn around sunset, near to the time the girl died?”

  “Our house sits alongside the highway. ’Twould be simple enough for anyone with malicious thoughts to creep onto our land.”

  “Did someone with malicious thoughts do just that?”

  “I was occupied in the dairy-house inspecting the milk pails, as I always do at that time of day,” she replied. “I had instructed that they be scalded clean and set out in the air to sweeten. This must be done daily lest the pails sour and corrupt the milk. Great care must be taken, Constable Harwoode, and servants cannot always be trusted.”

  “Where was Master David while you were occupied with your milk pails?”

  “He was in the office, attending to the farm accounts,” she said.

  “If you were occupied in the dairy-house, how can you be certain he was in the office?”

  “I did not hear him attacking Anna in the barn, Constable, if that is what your question suggests,” she replied sharply. “The dairy-house is hard by the barn. I heard no cries, no screams. I inspected the milk pails, returned to the house, told our cook to serve supper. Soon after, David joined me in the hall along with the other children. Like every evening, Constable.”

  “The dairy-house is hard by the barn, and yet you heard no screams. Even if Anna had been innocently trampled by an enraged cow, you should have heard her cries,” he pointed out. “You could not have been nearby when the girl died, Mistress, or you lie about what you saw or heard.”

  “My son did not cause Anna’s death, Constable. He came to supper composed. Until we heard screeching coming from the farmyard, that is,” she said. “Jennet had just served us our stewed trout. The noise came from Thomasin, shouting that she’d found Anna. My youngest girl screamed in terror and spilled her food onto the floor.”

  “Which of the servants knew Anna best?” asked Kit.

  “Jennet.”

  “I would like to speak with her.”

  She strode
off to collect the girl, returning moments later with the whey-faced servant who had fetched him to the barn last night.

  She curtsied. Her eyes were watery, red. “Constable?”

  “I would like to speak with her alone, Mistress Merrick.”

  Mistress Merrick opened her mouth to protest but decided against it. “No lies now, Jennet,” she said to the girl before leaving them.

  Jennet sniffled and eyed him warily.

  “Anna was your friend, I’m told,” said Kit, once Mistress Merrick’s footsteps had faded.

  “She was like a sister to me.” Tears sprang to her eyes. “Neither of us have a body to care about us. And now she is gone.”

  “Did you see anyone out by the barn near sunset, Jennet?”

  “I may have done. The crooked-legged fellow who tends the mistress’s pigs and chickens, I think,” she said. “But now I cannot be sure.”

  “No strangers.”

  “I had to help Cook prepare supper. I was not in the courtyard near sunset to see who came or went. I am sorry, Constable. I cannot help you.”

  A house full of servants and children and none had noticed anything unusual. Or were willing to admit to noticing anything unusual.

  “Of late, did Anna seem fearful?” he asked. “Anxious?”

  The girl chewed her lower lip. It was chapped and began to bleed. Kit wished Gibb were here with his soothing manner. Women happily revealed their deepest secrets to him.

  “Jennet, I will not tell Mistress Merrick what you say. Trust me.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut, and when she reopened them, she seemed calmer. “Ever since the players arrived in town, Anna was a fever of changeable moods. Gladsome, then mirthless,” she said. “When Bartholomew was found killed, she was greatly distressed.”

  “Fearful?”

  “We have all of us been fearful, Constable. All the servants. Since the neighbor’s sheep died. Before that was the child whose family lives near to the mill. The girl was hale in the morn and fell sick in the fields that afternoon,” she explained. “Cook said a witch cursed them. That we were to watch for signs of one. The mistress came upon us talking and said for us to mind ourselves, lest we be next. Then Master Reade died. Now Anna …”

  Tears spilled from her eyes. She dabbed them away with the corner of her apron.

  Kit let a few seconds pass so the girl could collect herself. “Did Anna believe a witch had killed Master Reade?”

  “She was affrighted, but I do not think of a witch.”

  “Someone in this household, perhaps?”

  Her eyes, narrow-set but a pretty hazel color, would not look into his. “I know not, Constable. I know not.”

  Kit considered her. “I have one final question for you, Jennet. Yesterday, midday or so, one of the town merchants came here. Jeffrey Poynard is his name.”

  “I know who you mean.”

  “Did you see him?” asked Kit.

  “I did. I’d been in the dairy barn with Anna, asking how she fared after her sickness, when Thomasin called her into the yard. Thomasin is fond of ordering the other dairymaids around,” she said. “’Twas then that Master Poynard arrived.”

  “I am told he came to speak with her. Did you hear what he had to say?”

  “’Twas not Anna he sought, nor Thomasin,” she said. “He was looking for Master David.”

  “Why?”

  She chewed her cracked and bleeding lip again. “He took to shouting that Master David was making the foul claim that Master Poynard was a murderer. He made threats against Master David. That he was to keep quiet if he valued his health,” she said. “Anna and I cowered in the barn until Master Poynard left. She was so afraid. Though my place is in the house and not in the barn, I do so wish I’d stayed with her, Constable. She might be alive if I had done.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Bess paced the ground floor parlor of Kit Harwoode’s house. Occasionally, she paused to look out the window at the street as though her gaze could summon him to appear. But her gaze did not summon him. How long was he to be at the Merricks’ that morning? Had he made a discovery without her?

  “Fie, Bess, you are not his assistant,” she muttered in frustration.

  Just then, she spied the constable striding across the square toward his house. He flung open the door and charged inside. Bess intercepted him before he climbed the stairs at the rear of the entry passage.

  “Constable!”

  “Bloody … Mistress Ellyott, do not leap at me from shadowed rooms,” he said, halting halfway down the passageway. He’d drawn his dagger, which he carefully returned to its sheath.

  She raised her eyebrows and nodded at the weapon. “I shall not forget in future, Constable.”

  “That would be wise,” he said. “And why are you not in my upstairs hall, where I usually encounter you?”

  “Your servant would not allow me to go up there. She said the hall is untidy.”

  He rolled his eyes. “She prepares the space for the supper I have been coerced to hold,” he replied, extending his hand in a gesture suggesting Bess should return to his parlor. He followed her into the room. “Alice has thrice moved the table and remains dissatisfied. Even though I have told her that my cousin’s gathering must be delayed.”

  “The supper is not to be tonight?”

  “Disappointed?” he asked.

  She would not examine her feelings in that regard, lest she find her answer to be yes.

  Bess took the chair the constable moved into place for her and changed the subject. “What did you learn at the Merricks’?”

  “That Agnes Merrick would doubtless provide an alibi for her son if she witnessed him committing a crime directly in front of her.” He placed a stool across from Bess and sat. “And that Jeffrey Poynard was at their farm yesterday because he was furious David Merrick was supposedly spreading the story that Poynard had killed Reade.”

  “I should have accompanied you and spoken to Thomasin. I would hear her version of events,” said Bess.

  “And you, Mistress Ellyott, should remember that to continue to ask questions risks accusations against you that I can’t protect you from.”

  She held her back straight within her pair of bodies and placidly returned his regard.

  He frowned. “You’re not going to heed my warning, are you?”

  She knew better than to answer.

  “I have not come to your home solely to hear what you have learned from the Merricks, Constable,” she replied instead. “I am here because of Goodman Jellis. Before I received the sad news about Anna, I was puzzling over the manner of his death. I would like to examine his body.”

  “He is set to be buried today, Mistress Ellyott,” he said. “And I cannot fathom what you hope to find on the old man’s body.”

  “I look, Constable, for the pricking of a thorn.”

  * * *

  “You would have me suppose, Mistress Ellyott, that a hawthorn killed him?” asked Kit Harwoode.

  They strode across the market square bound for the Poynards’, the usual attention on them both. The constable had learned that the old man’s body was being held in a room at the Poynards’. He’d died a supposed criminal, and thus his body was not to be given to his daughter to be stripped and washed and wrapped in a shroud as was proper for a good Christian. Instead, his burial would be hasty and ignoble.

  “I have heard a tale from my sister about a local cottager gravely affected by the scratch of one,” she said, her strides lengthening to match his. “What if Goodman Jellis was that cottager?”

  “And someone chose to prick him and gravely injure him once more. Interesting,” he said. “Though I expect the burgesses shall see you pilloried for this.”

  “Why? What crime do I commit by wishing to examine Goodman Jellis’s body?”

  “The crime of defaming the coroner by distrusting his findings,” he said.

  “Which you have also done in the past,” she pointed out. “You have not been pilloried f
or distrusting his findings.”

  “Aye, but I am the constable.”

  And she was but a woman who did not stay confined to her proper place.

  “I will take the risk, Constable. ’Tis too important,” she said.

  The grocer’s wife, the mirror she always slung from her girdle glinting back the morning sunlight, nodded at the constable—but not at Bess—as they passed her. The cobbler’s apprentice paused in calling out for custom to squint in their direction.

  “Pilloried, Mistress,” he repeated.

  She hoped she would merely be tied to the pillory, should the coroner take offense. Rather than having an ear nailed to the post to be cut off when the punishment had concluded.

  Reaching up to rub her fully intact ear through the cover of her coif, she cast a look at the pillory. It was located near the church at the far end of the market square. Blood had stained the length of the wood, a reminder of past petty criminals who’d suffered justice there.

  “I do not intend to defame the coroner, Constable,” she said. “I merely wish to understand the truth.”

  “If finding a scratch on Jellis’s body will provide the truth,” he replied. “I have no great stomach for your task, Mistress.”

  “Your stomach must be stout enough to have agreed to allow me to inspect the fellow’s corpse.”

  “I do not recall agreeing.”

  “You have not stopped me, have you?” she asked, looking over at him. “Nay, you walk alongside me full of curiosity.”

  “You’d find a way to examine Jellis whether or not I agreed,” he said. “Nonetheless, I remain wary that this venture will not end well.”

  “And I remain resolved.” Martin would have called her obstinate.

  They arrived at the Poynards’. The servant girl who answered the constable’s knock perked her brows at his request to see Goodman Jellis’s body, but she allowed them entrance through the gate in the garden wall.

  “The old man is there.” She pointed at the room where Bess had visited Simon, the moldy former byre of some forgotten animal, and skittered off.

  The constable watched the girl depart. “I give you a spare few minutes to inspect the body, Mistress, before a Poynard comes stamping into the room to interrupt us.”