Though Monsieur Fleury checked that the lane outside the weavers’ cottages was empty before allowing me out, I walked into the High Street with a sense of unease; it seemed I was picking up the fear that saturated that house. Without any clear idea of what to do next, I found myself turning in the direction of the cathedral. I decided to call on Harry Robinson, to see if he had heard the news of the apothecary’s murder and what he made of it. It was not yet nine. Outside the shop, a small crowd was still gathered, whispering with relish, hands clasped to scandalised mouths, the goodwives thoroughly enjoying this latest episode of town drama. I hurried past, keeping my head down, though no one paid me any attention. I noticed the girl Rebecca was no longer among them.
Who killed Sir Edward Kingsley? I half smiled to myself at the memory of Sophia quoting William of Ockham at me, as if she were the philosopher. I was fairly certain she could not share those jokes with Olivier; at least I had that on my side. If I had learned anything in the past couple of years, it was that the obvious solution was often far from the truth. She wanted me to find Nicholas Kingsley guilty of his father’s murder; it would be a neat solution, certainly, and a chance for revenge on a young man with few redeeming qualities. But to assume his guilt from the beginning would make me no better than Constable Edmonton, with his talk of rounding up vagrants.
Sophia. Damn her, damn her eyes and her mouth and her throat and the curve of her hip and everything else she could not disguise. What was I doing here? I should be in London, among my books, not miles away in a strange city, regarded with suspicion and hostility and mixed up in murders that had nothing to do with me. I, who had always prided myself against the weaknesses of the heart; how often I had mocked or pitied other men who had allowed themselves to be distracted from the pursuit of knowledge by delusions of love. On the one occasion, during my stay in Toulouse, when I had grown to love a woman I could not have, I had made a decision and left for Paris one night without saying goodbye, rather than staying to waste my time and hers in useless pining. How, then, had I allowed myself to fall under the spell of Sophia? Beauty, yes, but I had seen beauty many times before and resisted it. Perhaps it was a kind of recognition; I had seen in Sophia, even from our first meeting, a searching intelligence, a refusal to accept what she was told merely because it had always been so. She and I wanted the same thing: independence, the right to choose our own path and to ask questions, and we had both been born to a station in life that kept such freedom out of reach. Perhaps that was the root of my feelings for her; she reminded me of my younger self. The thought prompted a hollow laugh; was that not the ultimate vanity? “
In the Buttermarket, crowds gathered around the stone cross and the horse trough in the centre of the cobbles, the formidable towers of Christ Church gate casting their shadow across the coloured awnings of the market stalls. There was a great deal of animation in the buzz and hum of conversation, the townspeople clearly stirred up by the excitement of another killing in their midst.
Tom Garth stood solid as a stone column in his alcove under the gatehouse arch, arms folded across his broad chest. His expression when he saw me was even more hostile than it had been the day before, yet he nodded me through, holding out his right hand.
“Your knife, sir.” He did not meet my eye. “Are you here for divine service?”
I unstrapped the knife from my belt and placed it into his outstretched palm. “What time is it?”
“Holy Communion at nine, sir. You’re early.”
“I will call on Doctor Robinson in the meantime.” I hesitated. “You were very angry last night, it seemed.”
He looked away as if he had not heard me.
“At the Three Tuns,” I persisted.
“I have good cause,” he said eventually, still not meeting my eye. He turned my knife between his hands.
“Young Master Kingsley’s manners would try anyone’s patience,” I ventured.
“You seemed tight enough with him and his crowd last night, for a newcomer,” he flashed back, finally glaring at me, then appeared to regret having spoken and returned his attention to the knife.
“I wished only to take his money.”
Garth raised his eyes and looked at me with new curiosity.
“And did you?”
“To make money at cards, sometimes you first need to lose a little. To build the trust of your companions.”
Unexpectedly, Garth smiled. It transformed his large, crude features from their habitual suspicious frown to an expression of bright amusement.
“You lost, then.”
I acknowledged the truth of this with a laugh.
“I damned well did. But I’ll get it back next time.”
“I never heard a churchman talk like that before.”
“I am not your ordinary churchman.”
He nodded, as if to say that much was plain.
“Well, I wish you luck of it. Take all the blasted money you can from that whoreson, begging your pardon, sir.” He glanced at the cathedral with guilty eyes, as if it might disapprove of his language, and his face grew hard again.
“If he owes you a debt, can you not go to law?”
He shook his head, his lips pressed together.
“You would not understand.”
“Try me,” I said gently. “I know a little of English law.” A little was the truth; I lacked any knowledge to advise him, but I hoped to win his confidence.
He sighed, and glanced over his shoulder, biting the knuckle of his thumb.
“His father was the local justice, you know?” He lowered his voice, even though no one was within earshot.
“The man who was murdered here in the cathedral?”
He muttered an acknowledgement and looked down.
“What help could my family expect from the law when the man who owed us
“Was it a large sum?”
He twisted his big body awkwardly and did not answer.
“The debt, I mean?”
“What that man owed my family …” He paused and twitched his head slightly, as if to dislodge a persistent fly. “It was a debt you can’t put a price on.” Another pause; this time he looked at me, as if considering whether I merited his trust. He leaned in slightly. “My sister died in his house, nine years ago.”
“You think he was responsible?”
He clenched his teeth.
“There’s one thing you learn quickly as the son of a poor man and that’s not to accuse rich men of what you can’t prove. I was only fifteen when she died. My mother near lost her wits over it. She used to stand with her hair all unbound and denounce him in the marketplace like a madwoman, till they put her in the stocks for it. Now she won’t even leave the house. That’s why people call her a witch. I thought I could make Sir Edward see reason, give us something for our loss. Soon learned otherwise, didn’t I,” he added, his voice thick with bitterness.
“What happened?”
“He said he’d have me arrested for malicious slander and extortion if I ever repeated those words or any like them. Then he had me beaten black and blue, teach me a lesson. Can’t prove that either, but I know he ordered it.”
“But why do you think your sister’s death was his doing?”
He sniffed and fixed his eyes on a point above my head.
“Strong as a horse, our Sarah. Never seen her take ill a day all the time we was growing up. She never died of no fever, whatever he said.”
“Did she see a doctor?” I asked, though I remembered that Fitch had said Sir Edward called the physician out to her at his own expense. Garth’s face darkened with anger.
