unassuaged anger.
Sir Henry cleared his throat. “This one, wouldn’t you say?”
Sebastian turned to find the magistrate peering at a low tomb that lay just off the worn path leading from the rectory to the ancient iron-banded door of the south transept. Sebastian walked over to stare down at the simple stone monument formed of gray stone sides some eighteen inches high surmounted by a cracked flat slab. Its inscription was so weathered and encrusted with lichen as to be virtually unreadable.
“Probably.” He glanced up. From here he could see the High Street and the village green, and beyond that, the stone bridge that arched over the stream. “A rather public spot for a killing, wouldn’t you say?”
Sir Henry nodded. “According to the Reverend, the boy disappeared in the afternoon while fishing. They searched the woods and fields behind the rectory to no avail. It wasn’t until early the next morning that his body was discovered here. Which would suggest the boy was killed, then taken to an out-of-the-way spot to be butchered before being brought back here to be found by the Reverend at first light.”
Sebastian shook his head. “Nicholas Thornton’s throat was slit. If the boy had been killed beside the stream, the men who searched for him that evening would have seen blood. They didn’t. Whoever killed the boy might have overpowered him in the wood, but I suspect he was killed wherever he was butchered.”
“Yes, of course.” Sir Henry stared off across the churchyard, lost deep in thought. “I wonder how many others there have been,” he said after a moment, half to himself. “There could be a dozen or more such killings scattered across the length of England and beyond. How would we know? I learned of this one only by chance.”
“I suspect this was the first,” said Sebastian.
Sir Henry swung to look at him. “How could you possibly assume that?”
Sebastian squinted against the bright sunlight. “Are you familiar with the poetry of John Donne?”
“Somewhat. Why? Whatever has Donne to do with any of this?”
“The objects left in the victims’ mouths,” said Sebastian.
Sir Henry shook his head. “I still don’t understand.”
“They’re from a poem.” Sebastian hunkered down to search the grass beside the weathered tomb. “‘Go and Catch a Falling Star.’ Do you know it?”
“I don’t believe so, no.”
“I don’t remember all of it. Only the beginning. But listen…
“Merciful heavens,” said Sir Henry. “The killer is following the poem. First the star, then the page from the ship’s log, and now the goat’s hoof. Only the mandrake root is missing.” His lips tightened into a grim line. “There must have been another murder. A murder that took place at some point between April and June that we have yet to discover.”
Reaching out, Sebastian traced the faded, incised cross on the tomb with his fingertips. “Perhaps. Or perhaps the killer simply skipped that line for some reason.”
“Skipped it? What possible reason could he have for doing such a thing?”
“I suspect he has a reason for everything he’s doing.” Brushing off his fingertips, Sebastian pushed to his feet. “The objects left in each man’s mouth. The different ways in which each was mutilated. The manner in which each body was displayed after death. It’s all been very deliberate. This killer has a reason for it all. And if we’re to have any hope of stopping him, we need to find out what that reason is.”
The drawing rooms and ballrooms of Mayfair would forever be barred to women such as Kat Boleyn—women who displayed their charms on the stage, who had known a succession of men in their beds. But Kat was a frequent and welcome guest in those salons of Bloomsbury and Richmond, where the entree depended not on birth or wealth but on possession of a keen wit and a sharp intellect, where conversation turned not so much to fashion, horses, and hunting as to art and philosophy, literature and science.
On the afternoon following her fateful meeting with Jarvis, Kat put in an appearance at the select salon of a general’s daughter named Annabelle Hershey. Miss Hershey was a small woman with pale skin and dark hair, green eyes, and a mind that might have made her an Oxford don had she been born a man.
She greeted Kat with a peal of merry laughter. “Miss Boleyn, you have been sent by the very gods! You find us in desperate need of a Shakespearean expert to solve our dispute. Do tell us, please: in
Kat cast a quick glance around the crowded salon. The assembled company ranged from scientists such as Humphrey Davy to the renowned literary hostess Miss Agnes Berry and a moody, brilliant, but little-known poet named Lord Byron. The man Kat sought was not here. “Shylock,” Kat said. “Tubal is his friend.”
Annabelle Hershey threw up her hands in mock surrender. “You were right, Miss Berry! It’s back to the schoolroom for me.”
From there the conversation slipped easily into a discussion of the rebuilding of the Drury Lane Theater. Kat stayed chatting for some fifteen minutes, and was about to take her leave when Aiden O’Connell strolled into the room. Kat flashed him a wide smile, then immediately looked away.
He approached her a few minutes later. A lean man in his late twenties, he had beguiling green eyes and a dimpled smile that made him a favorite with the ladies despite his unfortunate position as a younger son. “Any other man in the room would be in transports to have received such a welcoming smile from the most beautiful woman in London. So why am I filled with trepidation?”
“Because you’re not the fool you would have others think you, perhaps?”
He opened his eyes wide. “Do I play the fool?”
“Very well.” She leaned into him under cover of flirtatious laughter. “I must speak with you. Urgently and alone.”
His gaze met hers, and whatever he saw in her eyes drove the amusement from his. “When and where?”
“I am being watched. Come to my dressing room at the theater. Tomorrow night after the performance.”
He was silent for a moment, considering this. “Very well. Until then.” He moved away from her, to where Sir Thomas Lawrence was entertaining a small group with a tale of the antics of his latest subject’s ferocious pet parrot.
Kat watched the Irishman out of the corner of her eye. It had occurred to her that by warning Aiden O’Connell, she was running a serious risk. If he knew she meant to betray him, he could very well decide to have her killed himself. Yet it was a risk she had decided she must take. She could not betray him to Jarvis without first giving the Irishman an opportunity to escape.
How she would deal with Jarvis’s fury when he discovered his quarry flown was a quandary she had yet to satisfactorily resolve.
That evening, the wind blew in from the northeast, bringing with it the biting chill of the North Sea. Devlin sat in a wing chair beside the fire in Kat’s bedroom, a volume of John Donne’s poetry open on his lap. He was flipping through the pages when Kat came to stand behind him and loop her arms over his shoulders.
“What are you looking for?” she asked.
“Listen to this,” he said, and began to read.
