The Heresy of Dr Dee

Throwing down the vulgarity like a stone into a placid garden pond, watching Bradshaw wince.

‘While deriving a little extra income from whorehouse takings,’ I said.

‘What do you want?’

I turned slowly, the question having come from the serving board behind me.

‘Where’s my friend?’

‘I’ve already told you. I know not where he’s gone.’

But I’d not previously seen the plumpen, brown-faced innkeeper, Jeremy Martin, so far from a smile.

‘Earlier, he was with – I think I have this right – Branwen Laetitia Swift? One of your whores?’

‘Letty? Keeps her own affairs, Dr Dee. A clever woman, whom men pay for more than her body.’

‘Which men?’

‘Not my affair,’ Martin said.

Had I misheard, or was his cheerful border-country accent fallen away?

No matter, this was going not as well as I’d hoped. What if these knaves truly had no knowledge of Dudley? I moved myself further away from the innkeeper, so that I might see every man in the well-lit parlour.

My cousin watched me in silence, his face in collapse. What must his thoughts have been when he’d received my letter asking if he knew the whereabouts of the former Abbot of Wigmore? And then, when I arrived without warning, a man with links at the highest level of government, who might shatter his little world like poor glass.

But how dare the bastard point the finger at my father for the foolish and desperate sale of church plate in a time of dire need?

I stood up.

‘Think on it,’ I said. ‘If anything useful occurs to you, we’ll be in my chamber.’

On the way out, I looked at the hands of Jeremy Martin – hands too plump and smooth to have spent years hefting barrels from a cellar.

Thought of those hands on Anna Ceddol.

Turned away.

XLI Personal Dressmaker

‘OH, THAT WAS a mistake,’ Forest said. ‘And coming up here was an even worse one.’

He went to the window, pushed open the shutters to look down into the moonwashed mews.

No one there, not even the ostler.

‘We can get out this way, if needs be. Not much of a drop. Grab hold of the ivy, you’ll be—’

‘They’re merchants and dealers,’ I said, ‘not men of violence.’

Forest swung round to face me.

‘Such men live only for money. And you’ve threatened their life’s income, Dr Dee. Not to say their freedom. Even their necks. You’re alone in a strange town in the midst of nowhere. If you fail to arrive back in London… well, anything could’ve happened along the road. That’s what they’ll say when nobody even finds your body.’

He went to make sure the door of the bedchamber was bolted. I recalled the parting words of John Scory.

… worth remembering that Presteigne still has its share of dark alleys.

Was all this well known? Or only to a circumspect and pragmatic bishop.

Forest slumped back on to the truckle bed, rubbing his eyes. Cold in here, but he was sweating.

‘Did I understand that aright? It’s your opinion that the fat innkeeper is the former Abbot of Wigmore?’

‘He didn’t deny it, did he?’

‘God’s blood.’ Forest was shaking his head. ‘How’s he got away with it for so long? It’s not as if he’s invisible.’

‘No better place to hide than in full view. And if a man’s added immeasurably to the prosperity of a town and all who live there, a wall of silence will be erected about him.’

‘A whoremaster, too?’

‘Well qualified,’ I said, recalling Bonner in the Marshalsea.

Poking maids and goodwives over quite a wide area.

‘If even half of what you came out with down there is true,’ Forest said, ‘it’s clear you can’t lie here tonight. Nor anywhere in this town. You have to get out, and soon. And I mean soon. Might be the best thing if you were to ride back with me to Hereford, after—’

‘What about Dudley?’

‘—after we make full sure that Lord Dudley is not here.’ Forest wiped sweat from his brow with a sleeve. ‘Jesu, how can he be away from here without a horse? This looks not good, Dr Dee. Is he robbed? Is he beaten? Is he…? What can we do? You know this shithole better than me. Where’ve we failed to search?’

‘I think, for a start, we might open his letter.’

‘No. Never. I’m entrusted to bring it to him.’

‘I say this not lightly. What if it offers some possible reason for his disappearance? Or suggests something we might do… somewhere we might look?’

‘I’ve never opened my lord’s correspondence.’

‘Then I’ll open it,’ I said.

I took a candle on a tray, went out and fired it from the sconce on the landing, glancing down the oaken stairs to the lower hall, where another single sconce lit an oak pillar.

All was quiet down there.

Too quiet, maybe.

* * *

It made little sense at first.

There was a letter within a letter, the outer and shorter of which was to Dudley from his steward, evidently written in haste and signed TB.

May it please your lordship, I enclose correspondence recently discovered by Sir Anthony Forster between the pages of a book in his library but not disclosed to the coroner whose inquiries were deemed to be completed.

I broke the inner seal and uncovered a bill of work from Lady Dudley’s London dressmaker, William Edney, for the alteration of two gowns.

Well, I knew of this from Dudley. One of the best indications that Amy had been in relatively good heart within days of her death was her continuing interest in fashionable apparel. The only other possible explanation was that she’d wanted her corpse to be found well and elegantly clad.

Attached to the bill was a note from Edney on which some lines had been underscored in thick ink strokes, presumably by Blount.

My lady’s personal dressmaker will attend upon her, as arranged, on the first Friday of next month, September 6.

It was dated August 27.

This, to me, was new. There had been no suggestion of Amy receiving any visitors on that last weekend.

There was another short note to Dudley from Blount which I read twice before passing the bill to Forest, who stared at it for some moments as if it might break into flames. I opened my hands, helpless.

‘I think you should read it. All of it.’ Pushing the candle towards him. ‘Did Lord Dudley have any idea that his wife was to be visited by a dressmaker two days before she died?’

‘Not to my knowledge. Can that be true?’

I passed him the small paper attached to the bill.