‘She won’t talk with me,’ I said. ‘She won’t even see me. Or anyone. The woman in Butleigh – have you talked to her? Will she go to the assize?’
‘John…’
‘You did find her?’
‘Let’s go back,’ Dudley said.
‘What?’
‘To the doctor’s. I have questions for him.’
‘For Christ’s sake -’ throwing back my head to the sky, greenish clouds sailing in from the coast with a skreeting of gulls, my voice hurled against them – ‘did you find her?’
A goodwife with a basket of eggs crossed the road, scuttling away from us. Dudley continued down the hill, and I caught up with him.
‘ Tell me.’
‘I spoke there to several people… Notably the smith, to whom I gave money in return for his honesty. And from whom I learned that there’s been no twins born in Butleigh this past year. No twins. Nor, come to that, these past ten years.’
I moved ahead of him, halting his progress, a flood of bad bile entering my gut.
‘You took one man’s word for that?’
‘ Listen to me. No births at all in more than a month. Including bastards. Confirmed by the minister of the church, who also maintains that no child in recent memory has been delivered there from the belly.’
Dudley’s eyes were lit with fury.
‘ Now will you go back and talk to the bloody doctor?’
XL
A Different Canon
Don’t misunderstand me. Robert Dudley was not like Carew. Behind the arrogance, my friend was an educated man with a questing mind. But he was yet a young man, with a young man’s impulse and a soldier’s spine, and there were times when all thought and reason would be kicked aside. And then you’d feel his hand quivering over the hilt of his sword, the air grown thin around him.
‘These knives…’
Standing now in Borrow’s doorway, shouldering out the sunlight, crisp winter in his voice.
‘See me later, please.’ Borrow buckling his leather bag, throwing it over a shoulder. ‘I have sick people to minister to.’
‘I’ll see you in hell, Dr Borrow. Where goeth all fucking liars.’
The space betwixt them throbbing like the hush before a beheading.
‘ Who are you, again?’ Matthew Borrow said.
‘You know who I am.’
‘I know who you claim to be.’ Borrow’s voice was but one notch above disinterest. ‘However, a mere clerk of antiquities would be unlikely, in my experience, to employ a groom. My instinct tells me you’re clad below your status, so if we’re speaking of liars…’
No movement in his grey eyes; he’d marked Dudley’s mood, yet had no fear of it. Found it, if anything, a sign of weakness.
And, in some way, this gave me small hope, for the very last thing I wanted was for Borrow to have lied about the bloodied knives. I wanted there to be some reason for them that we’d all missed. Some reason not involving Nel.
There was a tacit suspension of hostility. Borrow unslung his medical bag, and the tension went out of Dudley, who came into the surgery and closed the door behind him.
‘Dr Borrow, tomorrow is Sunday. The day after that, your daughter goes on trial for her life, accused of witchcraft and the murder of my groom. Did she kill him?’
‘I’m her father.’
Borrow opened out his hands, two rings of dull metal on one, the kind employed to dispel cramp.
Dudley said, ‘Will you plead for her in court?’
‘If I’m allowed, I’ll give evidence as to her good character and appeal for her to be cleared of all accusations.’
‘And tell the judge and jury the truth about the bloodied surgical tools?’
Silence.
‘What is the truth, Dr Borrow?’
No reply.
‘For God’s sake, Dr Borrow,’ I said. ‘We’re on your side. Your daughter’s side.’
The look Dudley gave me implied this was not necessarily the case, but my own feelings could never be so easily discarded.
‘I swear to you,’ I said with a passion I could not quell, ‘that I’ll move all heaven to have her released.’
Borrow raised an eyebrow. I breathed in hard against a blush.
‘Listen,’ I said. ‘Looked at with dispassion, it seems hardly credible that such a big man was killed and butchered by a woman. Nor can credible motive be shown. But the fact remains that, with no Caesarean birth in Butleigh – no birth at all – your explanation for the blood on the knives-’
‘Is shown to be a lie.’ Borrow’s hands falling to his sides. ‘Yes. Had I been given notice, I’d’ve come up with a better one.’
Oh Christ.
Some of it was true, apparently.
What he’d said about coming home late, very tired, throwing his tools under the stairs, where both his and his daughter’s were stored.
His tools which, that night, seemed to have been unused. Borrow threw open a door to show us where they were kept. It was a cramped space, with narrow wooden stairs.
I said, ‘You had no cause to bring them out next day until-?’
‘Why would I? They needed no cleaning. No-one came to my door in need of surgery.’
‘So the bloodstained tools…?’
‘One of Fyche’s men pulled out the bag and passed it to him and he said, “What are these? Whose is this blood?” And held them up, and I could see that there was blood, and I told him… the first likely explanation that came into my head. But Fyche wasn’t listening anyway. As I told you, he had his evidence. He was satisfied.’
‘How do you know the bloodied tools were Nel’s?’
‘Mine are still here. Unbloodied.’
‘Did you see Nel’s tools there before Fyche took them?’
‘No. They were quickly passed hand to hand and out of the door.’
‘Then how do you know they were hers? And not some others brought here by Fyche as… as ready-made evidence?’
Knowing, even before the words were out, that I was grasping at dustmotes in the air.
‘In which case… where are Eleanor’s tools?’ Borrow said. ‘Dr John, I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I fear your friend is right. I lied… not well enough.’
Dudley said, ‘Did she kill my servant?’
Borrow met his eyes at once.
‘Of course not. A woman?’
‘Then what?’
‘I don’t know…’
‘Could she have lent her tools to someone who brought them back in this condition?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘To whom might she lend her tools, Dr Borrow?’
