their anger against me. And if I stand in their way, it is much easier to remove me than abandon their plans. And then what becomes of my son?”
“Is that what happened to Sir Edward Kingsley? Did he threaten to stand in their way, in the end?” So the mayor was the fourth guardian. I absorbed this news with a level expression.
“I don’t know what happened to Edward Kingsley,” she said, looking me right in the eye. “Though I don’t mourn him.”
“Testify, Alys. Back me up with the truth, against their lies. You could be free of Langworth.”
“You really think they would listen to us? A foreigner and a woman, against the mayor, a canon of the cathedral, and a physician?” She shook her head with a dry laugh, as if my naïveté amused her.
I pushed my hands through my hair in frustration. This was Tom Garth’s attitude too; was justice so easily bought and sold in this town that no one dared stand up and speak the truth? Would it always be the same: corrupt and self-serving men exploiting those who had no voice, because they were comfortably sure they would never be challenged? Certainly it would, if no one had the courage to at least try and face them down.
“I am not talking about justice as this town understands it,” I said softly. “There are those who will listen to me.”
I stood and stretched in the dusty sunlight. The widow watched me, appraising; I saw how her eyes travelled over my body. Twelve years at the mercy of Langworth, I thought. God, it is a cruel thing to be born a woman.
“Who
“Someone who wants to help you. Give it some thought, at least,” I said, turning to the door. “You could save yourself from Langworth. And your son from Saint Thomas.”
“And who would provide for us then? Will you, Master Filippo, or whatever your real name is? I didn’t think so. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices.”
“Would you sacrifice your son?”
She stood too and looked at me, wrapping her arms around her chest as if hugging herself against a coming assault.
“Thank you for helping us,” she said, in a tone of empty politeness. “You may see yourself out now.” And she watched me all the way to the door, her face guarded once more against any show of emotion. I had done my best, I thought, as I ran down the wide stairs and past the staring servant. I had no promise that she would help me, and if she chose to tell Langworth what I had just told her, he might well see fit to try and finish me off this very night, before I had a chance to spill a word of it to the queen’s justice. I felt a tightness in my chest and throat; so much was still unknown, the outcome still uncertain. By tomorrow we would see how the cards would fall. For Sophia, Harry, and me, a bad hand could mean the difference between life and death.
I walked back to the marketplace, emptying now as people made their way towards the cathedral to wait for divine service, baskets of goods hanging from their arms, jostling and chatting as they funnelled towards the gatehouse. I had just edged into the crowd when I felt a tug at my sleeve and turned to see Rebecca beside me, wide-eyed. In my brooding on my exchange with the Widow Gray, I had all but forgotten what I had asked the girl to find out for me. Her apprehensive expression gave me a terrible sense of foreboding; I beckoned her over to one side, out of the flow of people.
“What you asked me to find out? It is the most curious thing, but not a few moments after you left the stall, one of the goodwives from the North Gate parish came bustling up to tell Mistress Blunt that apparently Doctor Sykes was called out at first light to the Kingsley house to attend the old housekeeper.” Her hand still rested on my sleeve and her eyes were bright with the excitement of sharing her news; now she adjusted her face to a more appropriately sombre mien. “It is the saddest thing, but it seems the old woman had a bad fall in the night. Down some steps to the cellar, so the goodwife said, though I don’t know where she had that from. But Doctor Sykes said there was nothing he could do to save her by the time he arrived.”
“I’m sure he did his best,” I said, mechanically. I felt as if a stone had lodged in my chest. I had known Meg was in danger; I had heard Langworth as good as say that she knew too much. She had seen the beggar boy in the kitchen at St. Gregory’s; she could have said so in a courtroom. Now she could say nothing. If the fall—which I had no doubt was the result of Langworth’s visit last night—had not killed her outright, Sykes with his bag of potions would certainly have made sure of it, even as he pretended to try and save her. Just like Sarah Garth. But had I not tried to warn Meg, I argued with my conscience; what more could I have done, when she was as good as resigned to whatever befell her there?
“It is so curious, though,” Rebecca was saying. “How did you
“Did you say anything to Mistress Blunt about that?” I asked, lowering my voice.
“Not a word. But tell me. It is like you have the gift of seeing the future.” She smiled; this, I supposed, was meant as a compliment.
Yet somehow I am always too late to save people from it, I thought. Old Meg would join the parade of accusing faces I saw sometimes in dreams, the people who had died because I had not been able to protect them, because I had not moved fast enough, or else as a direct result of my actions. “You cannot blame yourself,” Walsingham had told me once, and he knew all too well what it meant to have blood on his hands for the sake of a greater cause. “You cannot be everywhere and save everyone, Bruno,” he had said. “You must make your choices. Sometimes there will be casualties. This is a war, after all. We fight it with intelligence and ciphers and hidden writings delivered in the dead of night, but it is a war nonetheless, and sometimes it will exact a price.”
“She had complained of feeling ill,” I said to Rebecca. “I was concerned for her. Perhaps she fainted and fell, poor thing.”
“Hm.” I had expected her to press further as to how I had become so intimate with the old woman in only a few days, but her mind was elsewhere. “And I have more news—I am bound over to appear as a witness at your trial.”
I looked at her. “You will speak the truth?”
“Of course.” She looked indignant. “I mean to persuade them of your innocence. He was my uncle, after all, and if I don’t think you killed him, why should they?”
I smiled, though I feared in her puppyish enthusiasm she might protest too much, which would be of no help to my case.
“They sometimes try to put words in your mouth,” I said. “Watch out for that.”
She looked scornful.
“I would not fall for those tricks. Signor Savolino, do you mean to stay in Canterbury after the assizes?” She twined a strand of hair through her fingers as she asked this, sucking absently at the end of it like a child.
“I shall decide that once I have learned whether they mean to put a rope around my neck.”
“But your friends at court, they would not let that happen, for certain. Even Mistress Blunt thinks you are innocent,” she added, as if this were the decisive verdict. I smiled. As an eyewitness to the queen’s brocades, I was clearly now redeemed in Mistress Blunt’s eyes. If only the rest of Canterbury could be so easily persuaded.
“They say the queen’s justice is expected this afternoon,” Rebecca said. “There is always quite a procession—everyone turns out along the High Street to watch him arrive. He will take the best rooms at the Cheker, they say, and all his clerks and servants too. Perhaps I may see you among the crowds later,” she added, looking up from under her lashes and twisting her hair. “You will want to see him in all his pomp?”
“I suppose. It would be as well to see the man who holds my life in his hands.” I tried to keep my tone cheerful but I could not ignore the tightness in my chest. To unravel this unholy mess I must not rely on Canterbury justice, that much was clear. My fortunes, and those of Sophia and Harry, were truly in the hands of this unknown man riding in from London. I only hoped that he was not so easily corrupted—though my English friends’ reports of the legal profession did not inspire too much optimism on that count.
I thanked Rebecca for her help and took my leave, pressing through the crowd towards Christ Church gate, unstrapping my knife from my belt and hiding it in my boot before I arrived so that Tom Garth would not confiscate it. After the previous night, I was not willing to enter the precincts without a weapon. I was anxious to be back at Harry’s. I had only a day to prepare the charges I wanted to bring against Langworth and Sykes and I needed to have them set out clearly if my story was not to sound even more improbable than it already did. Meg had been silenced, but there was still the old monk in the West Gate gaol—perhaps he could be made to testify to what he had seen. And there were the two buried bodies—the boy Denis and the one reckoned to be Thomas Becket—as evidence to my theory of the proposed miracle, even if the Widow Gray would not speak against Langworth. True,
