something new and they will accuse you of alchemy or witchcraft, he said.”
“That is sometimes said of Doctor Sykes, is it not?”
“Huh. Uncle William was a great admirer of Doctor Sykes for that.” The curl of her lip as she spoke made her own feelings clear. “He said Sykes was not afraid to experiment.”
“What did he mean by that, do you think?”
She gave an impatient little shake of the head, as if the subject was no longer of interest to her, holding on to her coif with her free hand against the chafing wind.
“Oh, I don’t know. Uncle William was always in awe of those he thought his betters. Fawning, my aunt used to call it. He liked to say he could have been a physician if he’d been born a gentleman’s son and had the leisure to study. I never liked Doctor Sykes, though perhaps that’s unkind of me, on account of his looks. Puts me in mind of a great toad, with all his chins. And the way he fixes you with those cold eyes—like he’s picturing cutting you open on a slab to see how your insides work.”
“I would not put it past him.”
I had only seen Sykes on that one fateful occasion in Fitch’s shop, but she was exactly right about his cold eyes. So Sykes liked to experiment. Something nagged at the corner of my thoughts. I took a deep breath and deliberately focused my mind inward to the theatre of memory. Yes—Langworth and Samuel had talked of experiments that day I had hidden under Langworth’s bed. Langworth had said they should wait, there had been too many deaths in the town; had he meant that further experiments would lead to more deaths? Was that what the dead boys had been—subjects of experimentation? Sykes and Fitch shared an interest in medicine, but what was Langworth’s motive in such business?
“Is Sykes married?” I asked Rebecca. She grimaced.
“Not he. What woman would choose to marry that foul toad-face?”
“Is there any gossip in the town that he inclines another way?”
“Men, you mean?”
“Or boys.”
She considered this for a moment before a decisive shake of the head.
“I have never heard it said. And Mistress Blunt knows every scrap of gossip in Canterbury, she prides herself on it. Goodwives come to her stall for the tales as much as for the bread. If there were rumours like that about Doctor Sykes, she would be the first to know of it. Why do you ask?”
“No reason.” I smiled. “Only that it is sometimes said of men who are not married.”
“Are you married?” she asked, with a coy sideways glance.
“I? No.”
“And is it said of you?”
I laughed. “Not to my face.”
She still looked a little concerned; I winked to reassure her and she blushed pleasingly. “We turn down here,” she said, indicating a narrow unpaved street that ran parallel to the city wall, whose squat flint towers rose over the roofs of the cottages ahead of us.
These were poorer dwellings, few of them more than one storey and many badly needed their plaster and thatch to be restored. There was a strong smell of refuse and human waste here; the horse seemed reluctant to be led this way. I tugged gently on his bridle, whispering encouragement, and as I did a large brown rat scurried between my feet and disappeared. So this was where Tom Garth lived with his mother. Small wonder he had such a grievance about the soft lives of youths like Nicholas Kingsley.
Rebecca’s pace slowed as we progressed along the street, as if dragging out the moments before she was obliged to face Mother Garth. I wondered how frightening one old woman could be.
“This one,” she whispered, stopping at a run-down cottage with a crooked roof. One pane of glass in the front casement was broken and the gap was stopped by a sheet of canvas, which the wind had loosened to slap against the frame. Rebecca looked at me expectantly, so I stepped forward and knocked smartly three times on the door. The wood was not sturdy and I felt it bend even under the force of my knuckles. We waited for a few moments, Rebecca nervously twining the strings of her coif around her fingers. Eventually it seemed clear that no one was going to answer. I knocked again and leaned close to the door to listen out for some movement inside, but there was only silence and the crying of the gulls above us.
“No one is home,” I said, after a few moments more. The horse was growing restless and I was also impatient to be gone. “Perhaps you could leave the basket with a neighbour—”
Rebecca shook her head.
“She is there. She never leaves the house. We will have to go in.” She bit her lip at the prospect.
“I cannot leave the horse alone in a street like this,” I said. “He is valuable and I have paid good money as a surety for him in London.”
“I will wait and hold him,” she said, eagerly holding out a hand for his bridle. “It won’t take you a moment.” She shone a hopeful smile at me and I rolled my eyes indulgently, reaching for the basket. It ought to prove easier to question Tom Garth’s mother alone and I could not refuse the chance.
I pushed at the flimsy door and it opened easily into one small, low room with a fire in the centre and a hole above in the blackened thatch to let the smoke escape. In one corner was an ancient-looking wooden settle and beside the fire two rough stools. Over the fire stood an iron frame for hanging a cooking pot. In a far corner, a straw pallet was stacked neatly against the wall. I wondered if that was where Tom slept. The room was empty of life.
“Hello?” I called out. “Mistress Garth? I bring your bread.”
There was no reply. I glanced over my shoulder to see Rebecca’s anxious face peering in the crack of the front door. Nodding to her, I pushed it closed behind me. Opposite this door was another that looked as if it might lead to a back room. I crossed and opened it to find a dim chamber dominated by a large bed and smelling thickly of stale clothes and unwashed bodies. The one small casement was hung with a ragged dark cloth to keep out the daylight. I could hear a fly buzzing persistently against the glass in the stillness. To one side of the bed a wooden ladder rose up to what might have been a kind of loft or storage area built with planks over the rafters under the eaves.
“Mistress Garth?” I called again and this time thought I heard a scratch of movement from above, so slight it might have been a mouse in the thatch. I placed the bread basket on the floor and put my foot on the first step of the ladder. It creaked loudly. There was no further sound from overhead, but I continued up the rungs to the space at the top cut into the planks that had been nailed across the roof beams. Just as my head emerged through the gap, a bony hand shot out and gripped me by the collar; involuntarily I cried out and the creature holding me did the same, though with a note of triumph.
“You!” she shrieked, and I found myself staring into a face that would have terrified children. Wasted by age and hunger so that the skin was stretched across the bones, making the wild blue eyes seem larger and brighter, she bore on her cheeks the marks of childhood pox and a broad scar ran through her left brow. Most of her teeth were missing and her thin lips curled back over the bare gums as she fixed me with her strange, unfocused gaze. A mass of wiry curls stood out around her head, still dark in places though streaked through with silver like the pelt of a badger; with each movement of her head these ringlets seemed to quiver with life of their own and I thought instantly of Medusa and her hair of writhing snakes. I started back and almost lost my footing on the ladder; her grip tightened and she coughed out a hoarse laugh into my face.
“Are you come from the mayor?”
“I am come from the bread stall.”
She took no notice of this.
“I told my Tom to send someone from the law. Thieves! They are taking her things. For what, I don’t know. To sell? You tell me. Are you a constable?”
“No,” I said, keeping my voice steady. She was touched in her wits, that much was clear, but I felt there was some sense in it, if I could only tune my ears. “I have brought you bread.”
The feverish eyes raked my face again, though this time there was uncertainty in them.
“They are taking her things,” she repeated, though more quietly, and her grip slackened on my collar. “Why? It is all I have left of her.”
“Sarah’s things?” I asked. Her eyes flashed with fury and she pulled my face closer. Her breath stank of sour milk.
