Death by Disputation (A Francis Bacon Mystery Book 2) (24 page)

Chapter Thirty-Seven

“What do you think?” Trumpet turned in a circle for Catalina’s inspection. “Do I look like a bed-maker?”

“Mmm . . . allow me, my lady.” The gypsy wrapped a frayed length of thin wool around Trumpet’s head and tied it under her chin. “That’s better.”

“It’s itchy.” She tucked the kerchief behind her ears so she could see around it. “Can’t I wear my cambric neckerchief?”

“No, my lady. Real bed-makers have fifty years of age and are ugly. You are young and pretty, as am I.” Catalina was not precisely pretty — her features were too dark and strongly drawn. She was striking, however, taller than Trumpet by several inches and stronger of build.

The chapel bell tolled nine. Time to get to work. On Fridays, Mrs. Eggerley had a regular appointment with her astrologer, which always lasted two full hours. Trumpet meant to make the most of every minute. She and her maid were going to search Tom’s rooms to find anything that would help her identify the murderer and fulfill her part of the bargain she’d made with Christopher Marlowe.

She’d only gotten free on Monday by pretending to be sick. She’d locked the door of the bedchamber, where she and Catalina had changed into their gentlemen’s garb. They’d snuck out of the lodge with their hearts in their mouths for fear of being caught. Exciting, yes, but also time
consuming.

The Eggerley followed her everywhere like a lumbering red dog, yapping endlessly about Her Ladyship’s most honorable lord father and his imaginary generosity. In actuality, Lord Orford cared about exactly three things: gambling, investing in ships, and scrounging up more money to pay his gambling debts and fund his seafaring adventures. If he could sell his daughter to a rich Italian banker, he’d be good for another year or two.

Trumpet lifted her skirts and started toward the chamber door. Catalina gasped. “Oh, my lady! You may not wear those shoes for the making of beds! No, no, no, no, no, no, no!”

“I like these shoes. They’re my oldest Alan shoes.”

“Yes, my lady, but they are boy’s shoes and very fine ones. Please.” Catalina gestured at the bed.

Trumpet growled under her breath but hopped up and stretched out her legs, leaning back on her hands to keep from sinking into the deep feather mattress. While the gypsy changed her shoes, she surveyed the lavish furnishings of her hostess’s bedchamber with a critical eye. “If we run out of money before we rescue Tom, we could sell some of these tassels. They’d keep our game afloat for a month.”

Tassels hung from everything that could support them, from the scarlet bed hangings to the silken ropes holding candle wheels aloft. Smaller tassels adorned embroidered scarves draped around the bow window and over the gilt-framed mirror. Even the Turkey carpet lying atop a large and richly carved chest bore an edging of tiny tassels.

“This woman lives better than my mother did,” Trumpet said. “A vicar’s daughter and the wife of a college headmaster!” The only thing she liked about this overstuffed, over perfumed chamber was the knowledge that Tom had spent time in it, although she didn’t like his reason for being there. Still, Tom was Tom; when women beckoned, he obliged.

Except for her, it would seem.

The gypsy laughed and patted her freshly shod foot. “That is more better. Never forget the shoes, my lady.”

“Yes, yes. Now let’s hurry. We only have an hour before the students come back.” The college schedule never varied. The yard would be empty at this hour, all the men in classes at the Common Schools.

They slipped down the back stairs and went through the garden, walking quickly down the corridor outside the hall with their heads bent. The Egg woman had given Trumpet a visual tour of the college from the window in the master’s parlor, so she knew which stair was Tom’s. A few short steps and they were inside his front door.

After the luxury of the master’s lodge, the east range of this venerable college looked like a pig man’s hovel. Cracked clay tiles covered the floor under a skimpy layer of dirty rushes. The oak stairs sagged in the middle, the bannisters scarred by centuries of rough use. The thick doors had seen little in the way of polish. Tom and Ben had lived in the oldest building at Gray’s Inn, notorious for its state of advanced decay, but it was a palace compared to this ancient hole.

They climbed the stairs to the first floor and entered cautiously, faces hidden while they scuffled into the center of the room. Trumpet turned full around to make sure none of the students had happened to stay behind. The chamber was empty.

“I’ll start with Tom’s desk,” Trumpet said. “You scout around the others.”

“For what do I search, my lady?”

“Don’t ‘my lady’ me here. Call me — don’t call me anything. We’re looking for a stack of letters. Paper, folded square, about like so.” She gestured width and thickness with both hands.

She wanted a quick look at Mr. Bacon’s letters, if she could find them, to find out what Tom had learned or surmised about the death of Bartholomew Leeds and the rebellious zealots who had stolen his wits and his character. She didn’t care about the rest apart from keeping her bargain with Marlowe, but she wanted those last two items restored in full.

“If I were a spy,” Catalina said, “I would not keep letters.”

“You would if they’d been written by Francis Bacon.” The man could write with breathtaking clarity when he wanted to, but he could also be as opaque as a block of wood, especially when the topic was something he disliked having to put in writing. Still, his letters were likely to contain useful information that Tom might keep handy. “You can’t read anyway, Catalina. Who would send you letters?”

“They would send them to me to hide or to bring to you. I would keep your letters very safe, my —” She stopped herself with a
tsk
.

Trumpet saw the defensive pride in Catalina’s eyes and recognized the feeling. She didn’t accept her limitations either. “I’d better teach you to read, if you’re going to be handling my letters. We’ll start tonight.”

“Yes, my lady. Thank you, my lady.” Catalina’s dark eyes shone. She gestured at the desks placed in each corner of the room. “How will you know which one is that of your Tom?”

“I’ll know.” Trumpet turned full circle again, slowly, noting every detail. This chamber was much like the ones at Gray’s, only bigger and shabbier. It had the same smell though, of ink, wood smoke, and dirty stockings. The smell of studious boys. She loved it.

The windows were adequate, letting in light from both the front and the back. Trumpet noticed two servants spreading sheets to dry in the field behind the college and spared a moment to wonder if they had been there on the morning Leeds was hanged. Had Tom talked to them? She should question them herself when she got the chance.

She returned to her survey of the chamber. The smell might remind her of Gray’s, but the students in this college lived like monks. Not a scrap of decoration anywhere. Tom and Ben’s chambers at Gray’s had been filled with colorful oddments: a lute, a fiddle, bows and arrows, hats of all descriptions, the bright banners Tom collected, Ben’s broadsides plastered on the walls. She’d helped them pack it all up last January since Ben was moving into her uncle’s rooms to help her maintain her disguise for two more terms.

Those terms had ended and so had her one precious year as a scholar. Those last few months with Ben had been the sanest, most peaceful, most focused time of her life. No distractions, no confusions. She’d studied the law day and night, guided by two superlative tutors. Good, hard work, then simple relaxation in the evening, lounging by the fire with a mug of spiced ale and a cold pie. Ben was the ideal chambermate. He gave her privacy when she needed it, discreetly ignoring the special arrangements she’d made with the laundress to cope with her monthlies, but had always been ready to deflect the prying eye of any Graysian who came too close.

She sighed. She doubted she would ever again have so agreeable a cohabitant as Benjamin Whitt. But this was no time for mooning about the past. She had to make tangible progress toward identifying Leeds’s murderer before Marlowe would lift a finger to help her.

Finding Tom’s desk was no trick; she walked straight to the one closest to the fire that also had a good view of the yard. And sure enough, there was Tom’s writing desk, the one with the carved border of waves and ships, a bold anchor in the center of the lid. She frowned at the enormous Geneva Bible and the stack of biblical commentaries neatly placed beside it. Both the subject matter and the neatness were contrary to her Tom. Her spirits rose as she found a well-worn copy of
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
at the bottom of the stack.

Tom’s favorite. She’d never read it, but she knew the gist. One of the things all boys knew — except for Alan Trumpington. She’d begun studying Latin with single-minded determination on the day she decided to learn the law — the day after her mother died of sadness — but she’d had no time for the lesser literatures. She countered questions in that area by tossing them right back, pretending to be bored with such childish amusements. “Who cares about old Sir Gawain?” she’d scoffed. Tom had defended his hero at length with such passion she could write a book about the knight herself.

Sir Gawain was a good Christian man, as were all the knights of the Round Table, but finding this book on his desk hinted that her old Tom was still in there somewhere, underneath the new layers of extreme religiosity.

Trumpet sat on Tom’s stool and gazed at his belongings, missing him with a powerful ache. She blinked away tears — she never cried — and concentrated on her task. Where did he keep his letters? She reached for the quill in its stand and growled in frustration. She felt like a dwarf; his stool was too low for her. She hopped up and leafed quickly through everything on the surface, including the stack of commonplace books. She wished she could take those and read them at her leisure. They might tell the whole story of Tom’s descent into zealotry. But commonplace books were personal, not private. His tutors could demand to look at them at any time to monitor his progress in his studies.

She replaced them with regret, then opened every drawer in the writing desk, including the secret one accessed through a hidden panel at the back. She looked under the desk and all around it, examining the edges of the floor and the space above as well.

“Nothing.” She turned to watch Catalina performing a similar search around the other desks. There was no need to examine the other boys’ books and papers.

The gypsy lifted her arms in an elaborate shrug. “He would not hide his letter in another man’s desk. Too unsafe.”

“I agree. Let’s try upstairs.”

“We should make the beds, no?”

“You make them while I search.”

They gathered their skirts above their knees and climbed the ladder-like stair to the upper story. This narrow room was even plainer than the one below. The furnishings had obviously been chosen for durability, not style. Most of the floor space was taken up with sturdy beds hung with dull red curtains of the coarsest wool. The rushes looked weeks old, but at least they weren’t hopping with fleas. The small windows up here weren’t even glazed. If you wanted light, you suffered the wind. If you wanted to shut out the cold, you sat in the dark.

No wonder the Puritans’ message appealed so strongly to university men. They made a virtue of plainness. Why not, if it was all you had?

Catalina began whipping back bed curtains and flinging blankets about. Trumpet spotted Tom’s large chest and deduced that the bed in front of it must be his. She confirmed her hypothesis by smelling the pillows. The one on the left was a stranger; the one on the right was Tom. He had a salty, woodsy smell by nature and used a tonic with marigold in his hair.

She raised the pillow to her face and inhaled deeply. She noticed Catalina watching her with those knowing black eyes and tossed her head. Let her think what she wanted; she was only a servant. Trumpet plumped the pillow and put it back.

She went to the trunk, knelt in front, and opened it, getting another waft of Essence of Tom. His mother had taught him to put tansy and lavender in his chests. She spread her kerchief atop the rushes and carefully lifted things out, setting them in ordered rows so she could replace them again as they had been.

His fine linen shirts with their richly embroidered collars and cuffs were way down at the bottom, as if he’d tried to hide them from himself. She also found more tattered romances, satin slippers, and the green velvet cap that made his eyes shine like sapphires hidden under a layer of canvas. Above that were the plain shirts and brown stockings she’d seen him wearing here.

She found no letters except a few from his mother. She read the direction on the outer fold but didn’t open them. She couldn’t bring herself to go that far. She replaced everything carefully, got to her feet, closed the lid with a thump, and sat on it. “Still nothing. Maybe you’re right. Maybe he burned them all.”

“Maybe so, my la —” Catalina worked efficiently down the row of beds, lifting the edges of the thin mattresses to check the undersides for packets of paper, then shaking the sheets and blankets out over the top. She wasn’t particularly neat, but no one would notice, and if they did, they’d blame the real bed-makers. Trumpet had paid them enough to tolerate a few curt remarks.

“They must be somewhere,” Trumpet said. “He would want proof he wasn’t acting on his own, if anyone questioned him. And proof that he’d followed Bacon’s instructions if that were necessary. He’d keep the most important ones until the job was done. But where?”