Death by Disputation (A Francis Bacon Mystery Book 2) (18 page)

Tom raised his eyebrows at Steadfast and Abstinence. They shrugged. Tom turned back to the yeoman. “We don’t know that one. Could you give us the first few lines?”

The yeoman’s ears turned red. Thorpe tittered.

Fair was fair. Tom looked him straight in the eye and raised a pious finger. “One Timothy, chapter three, verse eight: ‘Likewise bursars must be reverent, not double-tongued, not given to much wine, not greedy for money.’“

Steadfast chuckled and added, “James, chapter five, verse four: ‘Indeed, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out.’“

The yeoman burst into great guffaws of laughter, slapping his thighs. Thorpe’s eyes narrowed to slits.

Tom rummaged in his memory to send another round at the yeoman, but Abstinence beat him to it. Piping up in her dulcet tones, she said, “Matthew, chapter twenty-two, verse twenty-one: ‘Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’“

Tom gazed at her in wonder, over flooded with loving admiration. How many women could rise so limberly to the occasion and grasp a man’s aims so firmly, adding that crucial thrust that brings the whole effort to a satisfying head?

A country knave who was the spit of the yeoman strode up with a young woman wearing a garland in her hair. A pair of sturdy lads followed close behind them. “Are these lot pestering you, Da?” The knave curled his lip at them.

Tom granted him a thin smile. If he was looking for trouble, he wouldn’t have far to look. Tom had not been getting enough exercise lately.

Neither had Steadfast. The lad was bred for farm work, not for sitting on his duff pushing a quill. He smiled his brightest Gospel-preaching smile and said, “Isaiah, chapter fifty-six, verse eleven: ‘Yes, they are greedy dogs, which never have enough. And they are shepherds, who cannot understand; they all look to their own way, every one for his own gain, from his own territory.’“ He punctuated each clause by making chopping motions with his right hand.

Abstinence faced the garlanded girl with her hands on her hips. She tilted up her chin and said, “Proverbs one, verse twenty-two: ‘How long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity? And the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate knowledge?’“

“I’ll give you knowledge,” the girl said, shaking her fist. “Whyn’t you prattling busybodies go back to your own parish? What d’ye mean, coming over here and quarreling with our festival?” She reached out her hand and gave Abstinence a push.

Abstinence pushed her back, just a touch, enough to show she wouldn’t let herself be shoved about. The girl took another turn, this time putting some weight behind it. Abstinence stumbled backward, stepped on the hem of her skirt, and stumbled again, lurching against Tom.

He heard her growl under her breath and smiled in approval. The girl had courage; she just lacked training. As he set her upright, he murmured into her ear, “Keep your weight centered over both feet. Don’t lean forward; it pulls you off balance.”

She looked up at him as if she were seeing him — really seeing him — for the first time. Then she grinned, not one of her coy little smiles, but a real, cheek-splitting grin. Tom felt a sudden stab in his chest and knew it for what it was: Cupid’s arrow. She’d felt it too.

He gave her a nudge. “Make me proud.” That was what his father had always said to him under similar circumstances.

Abstinence nodded once and turned back to her opponent with fresh determination. She took a step forward. So did the other girl.

“That’s enough right there.” The yeoman’s son stepped between the two girls and grabbed Abstinence by the shoulder, turning her around, apparently meaning to march her toward the middle of the road. He laid his other hand on the curve of her well-rounded backside. Then he stupidly — if understandably — squeezed.

Abstinence said, “Eep!”

Steadfast’s fist rocketed past her and landed smack on the knave’s jaw.

The next thing Tom knew, everyone was shoving someone, and balls of horseshit were flying as thick as the curses and the Bible verses. He heard a whinny and saw Thorpe steering his horse out of the way. He lost sight of him when he was forced to block the yeoman’s fist to stop it from rearranging his nose. He got a whiff of starch from the man’s freshly laundered ruff as he clasped him in a choke hold. The yeoman hooked his leg around Tom’s knee and pulled them both into the mud, where he rolled across the hem of a skirt and heard a howl as its wearer lost her footing and fell, bringing three others down like a row of bowling pins.

And folks said Puritans had no sense of fun.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“Don’t even think of entering our chambers in that condition.” Philip happened to be crossing the yard as Tom came through the gate. His mouth twisted, his expression one of horror and disgust.

Who could blame him? Tom’s face, hair, and beard were as brown as his doublet and he had a thick smear of fresh green horseshit straight up his left side. “I guess I am a bit of a mess,” he said. “We got into a bit of a brawl out there. It was fairly hailing balls of shit for a while.”

Philip shuddered. “I loathe fighting. And I hate to get dirty.”

“Huh.” An unfathomable philosophy. “I find it refreshing now and again,” Tom said. “It’s like a purgative for an excess of mental strain.” He wondered if physicians ever recommended the occasional brawl as a counter for a surfeit of study. Probably not. “I’ll just dash up for clean clothes and go straight out again to the bathhouse on Mill Street.”

“Don’t touch anything,” Philip said. He walked on toward the gatehouse.

As Tom approached his door, he spotted the pink scarf being placed in the window of the master’s parlor. He scratched at his mud-caked beard. He would far rather have his back scrubbed by Mrs. Eggerley’s clever hands than ply a long-handled brush in a public tub. He had promised Mr. Barrow he would break things off with her. Why wait? This could be their farewell tryst.

The scarf jigged up and down, waved by an unseen hand. She must have been watching him through a gap in the curtains.

He ran up to his room and got some fresh clothes out of his large chest. Then he went back down, across the corner of the yard, into the hall, and straight out the south door. Margaret wouldn’t thank him for tracking muck through her stylish gallery, not even across the paint-spotted drop cloths. Better to use the servants’ door at the back. He sprinted up the winding stairs on the balls of his feet.

She met him at the top, recoiling as she caught the full force of his condition. “Oh, Tom! What
have
you been doing?” She swept her left hand up, palm out. “Don’t tell me! I do not want to hear one single word until you’re fit for civilized conversation.”

She took his bundle and directed him to wait in the garderobe. One whiff of that stale closet and he went to sit on the stairs. He had to shift back again a few minutes later when the door at the bottom opened. Peering down, he saw the top of a laundryman’s head with a large cask on his shoulder. The voice of another behind him echoed up the brick well.

He closed the lid over the hole, which helped a little, and sat. While he waited, breathing shallowly through his mouth with his fingers pinching his nose, he tried to sort out what he could say to Margaret. She’d been a sort of neutral ground, aligned with neither his masters nor his targets. When he entered her chambers, he left his commission outside. They would both feel the loss. Tom couldn’t come up with anything that wouldn’t be too blunt or too feeble.

His mind wandered. He found himself wondering why horseshit should smell so much better than manshit. A horse was bigger by a large margin and hotter by nature as well. Something to do with hay versus meat, presumably, although few things smelled more delicious than a joint of beef roasting on a spit. He pondered that conundrum for a while, then stopped himself with shake of the head. “God’s bollocks! I’m turning into Francis Bacon!”

Mrs. Eggerley knocked sharply on the door. He emerged from that chamber of stink and followed her into her room. She had shed her outer garments and was wearing only a linen shift with a low square neckline and elbow-length sleeves. Her round hips shifted temptingly beneath the filmy fabric.

“Touch nothing,” she commanded, reading his mind. She closed and locked the door. Then she directed him toward a painted screen at the end of the room. Behind it, he found a round wooden tub draped thickly with sheets and filled with water, from which arose a fragrant steam. Red drapes hanging over the window beyond the tub cast a warm glow through the candles burning on tall stands. A coarser sheet was spread out on the floor in the far corner. She pointed at it with a stern finger. “Stand on that to undress. Every stitch.”

Tom had to hop to pull off each boot. He did his best not to scatter specks of mud as he tugged at his lacings. Margaret watched the entire performance, sighing softly as his breeches fell to the floor. He echoed that sigh as he lowered himself into the hot water. The blend of balsam, ginger, and sage soothed his aching muscles. He sank deeper into the tub, raising his knees to get his shoulders under.

“All the way, please,” she directed. “I’m going to wash your hair.”

He held his breath and slid all the way down, scrubbing his beard with his hands as he went under. When he slid back up, she poured scented soap onto his head and began massaging his scalp with her strong fingers.

“By my quivering soul, Margaret, that feels like heaven.” Tom closed his eyes and thought of nothing, letting the pressure of her fingers and the healing steam soothe his weary brainpan. She tended him in silence, granting him many minutes of simple bliss.

After a while she murmured, “Eyes closed?” and slowly poured a pitcher of warm water over his head, rinsing the suds from his hair. “That’s better.” She kissed him on the ear. “I knew there was a man under all that mud.”

He tilted his head back and kissed her on the lips. “He was waiting for you to discover him.”

“Lean forward.” She poured soap on a cloth and began to scrub his back. “Now you can tell me. What did you get yourself into today?”

Tom told her about the Rogation Day procession in Sawston, toning down the religious aspects and making it sound like good country fun that ended in a hearty brawl, as such festivals were so often wont to do.

She wasn’t fooled. “I’ll bet that odious Steadfast Wingfield started it. There’s something wrong with that boy. I can see you all at dinner, you know, through my squint. Before you befriended him, he would sit through his meals staring grimly at his plate, as if he feared to be contaminated by our wicked ways. As if there were any wickedness in this college!”

She scrubbed harder as her ire was aroused. When she ground her cloth into a fresh bruise, Tom flinched. She soothed the hurt with a kiss, then returned to a gentler rhythm. He sighed and leaned forward to give her room to work.

He’d forgotten about her squint — the peephole looking from the gallery down into the hall. A second one overlooked the chapel.

“Steadfast is all right,” Tom said. “He was a good sophista. We got to be friends during my disputation.”

“During which you got into another altercation, which I’d wager good money he started as well.”

“Well . . .” Steadfast had thrown the first punch then too. He was quick with his fists, no question. But could any man stand by and watch some village lout grope his sister’s arse? Tom would have laid him out the minute his hand touched her shoulder. That was a brother’s job. “He was provoked. This knave made a rude remark about his sister.”

“That girl! I’ve seen her, here and about in the town. Mark my words, Tom, that sort of shallow prettiness fades very quickly. She’ll turn into a hag after the birth of her first child.”

She began scrubbing his chest in large, rhythmic circles. Tom felt a delicious tensing in his lower body. The real fun would soon begin.

“Those Wingfields are no better than they should be.” Margaret sniffed. “A parson’s children are always starved for attention. Their fathers are out tending their flock or giving a sermon or off to some meeting somewhere. I know. My father was the rector of St. Mary’s Church in Chilton. The shoemaker’s children go barefoot and the parson’s children run wild.”

“In a way,” Tom said, “Simon Thorpe is responsible. He’s the one that riled up the yeoman and that’s what got the son going.”

“Which yeoman? Whose son?”

“I never learned his name.” Tom tested the flex in his jaw. “Though I’ll never forget his fists. He’s one of ours though — Corpus Christi’s, I mean. He and Thorpe were arguing about the entry fine for his lease. We got pulled into that somehow and one thing led to another.”

“Hm.” She patted his shoulder to signal that she was done with his back. “Leg, please.” He obediently raised one leg, resting his calf on the edge of the tub. She stroked her cloth from thigh to ankle. “My husband may need to have a few words with our new bursar.”

“Overstepping his bounds, is he?”

“Never you mind, darling.” His foot twitched as she washed between his toes. “At least those meddling busybodies have stopped your brooding about poor Bartholomew Leeds.”

“I wasn’t brooding,” Tom said. “Why does everyone say I was brooding?”

“Who else says it?”

“Mr. Barrow, for one.”

“Oh,
him!
He’s another one you could see less of and please me more. He’s not half as amiable as wants you to believe. Trust me; I know.”

Tom knew how she knew, but he also knew enough to keep the knowledge to himself. Women, for obscure reasons of their own, always wanted you to think you were their first. Even when they were married and had two children to show for it.

She smoothed his wet hair back from his brow. “You
were
brooding though, dearest, for a while. I could see it in your eyes. I could feel it in my own heart.” She pressed the wet cloth to her chest, leaving a transparent damp patch in exactly the right place. “I saw the way you went about, asking everyone your sad questions.”

Between her squints and the parlor window, she had nearly full coverage of the college. Tom hadn’t realized how well she could keep track of the daily goings-on.

“Mr. Leeds was my tutor. I wanted to find out what happened to him, that’s all.”

“And what did you find out?”

“Nothing, really.” Which was the sorry truth. The wine was drugged and the letter was faked, but he had no idea by whom. He’d had no news from Dorset about the noose other than that the package had arrived along with his other gifts. He’d ruled out Marlowe on the slender basis of his gut feelings but had yet to produce a better candidate for the deed. Unless he could find someone who had seen Steadfast outside the church during Perkins’s sermon . . .

“He hanged himself, Tom.” Margaret sighed, her wet shift clinging to her breasts as they rose and fell. “Sometimes a man strays into a dark thicket and becomes so entangled that his life becomes unbearable. I believe Bartholomew was led into such a thicket of despair by the unwholesome influence of that profane Christopher Marlowe.”

“Ah, Margaret, that’s hardly fair. He’s all talk, Marlowe. He likes to shock people. He doesn’t do any real harm. My sense is that Leeds was under too much strain, what with that melancholy book and the bursaring —”

“Oh, bursaring is nothing!” She clucked her tongue. “Strain? Fie! Do you think we’d let Simon Thorpe have the job if it were so difficult?” She rapped him on the knee. “Other leg. You know quite well what I mean. Marlowe is dangerous. Everyone thinks he’s so clever and charming, but when their backs are turned, well, that’s another story. Those sharp little eyes and that smirky little smile. My husband can’t keep his —” She snapped her lips together. “Let’s just say I’m glad he’s gone and leave it at that.” She scrubbed his left foot so roughly he had to grit his teeth and hold on to the side of the tub.

Tom smelled jealousy. He remembered Marlowe saying she’d made a play for him and been rebuffed. This could be merely spite. Or perhaps her husband had a taste for junior Fellows. Kit would have sent him scurrying home with a flea in his ear too. Humiliated enough to try to get him blamed for murder? Possibly. But would Dr. Eggerley commit murder himself just to punish Marlowe? Surely not. Still, it was worth reporting to Bacon.

“But now I’ve reminded you of all those sad things. That was too bad of me.” Margaret fluttered her lashes at him. “Whatever can we do to make it right?”

She ran her soapy cloth to the top of his leg and began to caress him. He moaned at the pleasure. “Up,” she said. He rose to his feet and stepped out of the tub. She wrapped him in a big towel, rubbing him vigorously from head to toe, shaking them both into bursts of excited laughter. When she reached his ready member, she paused. “Onion? Or tar?”

“Onion, and it please you, Margaret.”

She wrinkled her nose. “As you wish.” She picked up a jar and removed its wooden lid, releasing the sharp aroma of onion juice. She dipped the corner of her towel in it and anointed his cock liberally. She claimed it prevented conception. The other choice was to paint him with tar. The smell was less distracting, but Tom had visions of his cock being stained forever black so that he’d be forced to piss in private lest his fellows suspect him of bearing a pox.

Preventive measures applied, Tom earned his bath and then some, loving every minute of his work. Somehow during his labors they migrated to her bed. After they were spent, they lay with their legs twined, face-to-face with their heads on her silk-clad pillows. She sighed contentedly and closed her eyes.

He kissed each tender lid and studied her face with affection. Tiny crow’s-feet were forming at the corners of her eyes, not yet visible from a distance. Another pair of fine lines bracketed the corners of her mouth and the little hairs above her upper lip were slightly darker than the rest.

A thought struck him. “Say, sweetling. Do you ever use safflower and blanchet for your face?”