Silken Threads (39 page)

“No!” Nyle bellowed.

Joanna kelt next to Olive, who was rocking
back and forth as tears slid down her cheeks. “You’re with
child?”

Olive pressed a hand to her mouth, her eyes
squeezed shut, her waxen face sheened with sweat.

Graeham handed a large tin bowl to Joanna,
who thrust it under Olive’s face just in time. When the girl’s bout
of retching was over, Graeham took the bowl and passed her a damp
cloth, with which she bathed Olive’s face and throat.

“Are you pregnant by Rolf le Fever?” Nyle
asked her.

“Isn’t that why you’re going to arrest me?”
she asked raspily. “Because I was going to...to get rid of the
baby?”

Joanna, Graeham and Nyle all exchanged
looks.

Another knock sounded at the door. “Can I
get some
—
”

“
No!”
all three of them yelled at
once.

“Olive,” Joanna said, “tell us what
happened.” Graeham handed her a handkerchief; she dabbed the girl’s
face with it, then opened Olive’s fingers and stuffed it into her
hand. “From the beginning. You and Rolf le Fever...” she
prompted.

“Aye,” Olive sniffled, wiping her nose with
the handkerchief.

“For how long?”

“Since Christmastide. ‘Twas around the time
his wife took sick with her head cold, because that’s when he...he
noticed me, was when I started bringing her her tonic.”

“He seduced you?” Joanna said gently.

Olive closed her eyes and nodded. “At first
I...I tried to resist him, mostly because he was a married man, but
also because I was in l-love with Damian. And I c-could¬n’t believe
a man like that could see anything in someone like me. He’s a
guildmaster, and rich and handsome and he dresses so fine. But
Rolf, he wouldn’t give up. He said he loved me, he needed me. His
wife took a turn for the worse, what with the black bile and all.
He said it looked like she was dying, and he meant to marry me
after she was gone.” Olive shook her head. “I let him have his way
with me. And now I’m in love with him and I’ve got his babe in my
belly and I’m ruined.”

“I don’t understand,” Graeham said. “He told
you he couldn’t marry you if you had the baby?”

Olive nodded, her gaze fixed on the damp
handkerchief as she twisted it in her hands. “I’d be a fallen
woman. A man in his position couldn’t marry a girl who’d had a babe
out of wedlock, even if it was his. He made me promise to g-get rid
of it.”

“With those herbs?” Joanna asked, indicating
the two bundles that Nyle still held.

“Aye.”

“That’s what you were talking to le Fever
about in the alley last night?” Graeham asked her. “Ending the
pregnancy?”

“You heard us?” Olive asked, aghast.

“Aye. I thought...well, I thought you were
talking about something else.”

“You want to have the baby?” Joanna asked
her.

“Oh, yes.” Olive raised her tearful gaze to
Joanna. “But if you hadn’t shown up when you did last night, I’d
have gone ahead and got rid of it. I was that upset when I saw
you’d taken those herbs. I couldn’t figure out how you knew what I
was doing with them. But once I thought about it, I realized you
did the right thing. You kept me from a terrible sin.”

Joanna was at a loss for words.

“After you left,” Olive said, “I asked
myself what you would do if you were in my fix. You’re always so
wise and strong. You always know the right thing to do. I decided
you’d have the baby even without a husband, even if it meant living
in shame. You’d lift your chin and make the best of it. And that’s
exactly what I’m going to do.” Olive sat up straight and gave
Joanna a watery little smile.

Joanna squeezed her hand.

“Only now I’m going to be arrested for
trying to oust the babe from the womb,” Olive said mournfully.

“That’s not something women get arrested
for,” Joanna assured her.

Olive pointed to Nyle. “But he said he was
here to arrest me
—
and he had the herbs. I
thought
—
”

“He was mistaken,” Joanna said. “We all
were.”

The undersheriff stepped forward. “Not
necessarily.”

Graeham exchanged a quick look of dismay
with Joanna and rubbed his forehead.

“You two are satisfied with the wench’s
explanation because you know her and you’re disposed to believe
her,” Nyle said. “But in my vocation, I’ve had to learn to
cultivate skepticism.”

“She’s an innocent girl,” Graeham said. “A
bit impressionable, a bit lacking in judgment, perhaps, but she’s
young.”

Joanna stood, her hand resting on Olive’s
shoulder. “She’s certainly no murderer.”

“Murderer!” Olive said.

“When did Rolf le Fever propose to you that
you begin adulterating his wife’s tonic with poison?” Nyle
demanded, standing over the cowering girl. “Was it before or after
you became his mistress?”

Olive closed her eyes. “I’m going to be sick
again.”

Joanna held the bowl for her and wiped her
face. “Leave her be,” she told Nyle. “She didn’t poison Ada de
Fever.”

“Perhaps,” said the sheriff. “But think
about it. A young girl with a babe quickening in her belly,
desperate to marry the father
—
only he’s already got a
wife. The girl happens to be the apothecary’s apprentice. The
wife’s laid up with a rheum of the head. ‘Tis a simple matter to
lace her tonic with something that’ll make her gradually sicker,
and when the time comes, she gets enough to kill her, and none’s
the wiser. Le Fever may not even know she’s been doing it. Perhaps
she conjured up the scheme all on her own.”

“Can you look at this trembling, weeping
girl,” Joanna said, “and honestly think she’s capable of such
underhanded doings?”

“Mistress,” Nyle said wearily, “I’ve served
as undersheriff in this city for nigh unto twenty years. I’ve seen
grisly, cold-blooded murder done by sweet little grannies and
pink-cheeked children who laughed about it afterward. More than
once, I’ve seen men protest their innocence so fervently, with
tears in their eyes and their hands clutching holy relics, that
they were judged innocent and let go, only to turn around and
murder again.”

Olive leapt to her feet. “I didn’t do it! I
did want to marry Rolf, but I would never sully my soul with
murder
—
never! Tell me how to prove my innocence, and I’ll
do it!”

Indicating the herbs, Nyle said, “‘Twill
help if these are what you say they are, and not poison. I’ll have
them analyzed by a master apothecary. In the meantime, you’re to be
incarcerated at the Gaol of London
—
”

“The gaol!” Joanna exclaimed. “You don’t
have to take her to
—
”

“She’s a suspected murderer,” Nyle said,
unhooking the manacles from his belt.

Olive whimpered.

“You don’t need those,” Graeham said.
“She’ll go with you quietly, won’t you, Olive?”

Olive nodded vigorously. “Yes, I swear I
will. Please don’t chain me.”

“All right, then.” The undersheriff
grudgingly replaced the manacles. “But if you try to escape on the
way to gaol, I won’t hesitate to use deadly force.”

“I won’t try to escape.”

“What of Rolf le Fever?” Graeham asked. “You
can’t arrest Olive and let him off scot-free.”

“I have every intention of questioning
Master Rolf,” Nyle said. “He lives in that blue and red house on
Milk Street, yes?”

“Aye,” Joanna said, “but you’ll find him at
the silk traders’ market hall. He’s there’s most mornings until
nones.”

“I’ll go to the market hall, then, after I
escort this young woman to gaol. Are you ready?” he asked
Olive.

The girl nodded.

Joanna embraced her. “You’ll be out of gaol
before nightfall. I’ll make sure of it.”

* * *

After everyone was gone, Elswyth pushed
aside the deerskin curtain she’d been listening behind and stepped
into the apothecary shop.

It was dark in here, with the door and
window closed. Dust motes hovered in the narrow shaft of sunlight
squeezing in between the window shutters. They looked like little
sparkling stars; Elswyth trailed her hand back and forth through
them, making them dance and spin.

The sunlight shot through the stack of blue
glass phials on the work table, making them glow from within like
sapphires. How beautiful they were, exquisite really. They came
from Venice. That’s why they cost so much. No wonder the silk
merchant’s widow had tried to steal one. But Elswyth had stopped
her.
That’s ours,
she’d told her, and Joanna Chapman had
seen she was caught and put it back.

Afterward, Elswyth had counted the
thirty-four phials five times to make sure they were all there. And
that evening, after her gardening, she’d counted them again, just
to make sure.

That thieving bitch mustn’t be allowed to
get her hands on something so precious. That would be very bad,
very bad.

Elswyth picked one up and looked around. The
tiled-lined fire pit was empty even of ashes, having been swept out
that morning by Olive; the broom still leaned against the kettle
rack. Hauling back, Elswyth hurled the phial into the pit, where it
fractured in an explosion of startling blue shards.

She smiled and smashed another one, and
another, and another, until the pit was filled with crushed glass
that overflowed onto the earthen floor.

Her breath came faster now, but because it
was a tiring business, shattering thirty-four glass phials, not
because she was excited or upset. The time for fury was over. The
simmering rage that had bubbled and bubbled in her brain for the
past year was gone now, replaced by a cold, clear
certainty
—
a resolve that felt wonderfully sharp and hard
and glittering, like the fragments of blue glass in the fire
pit.

She knew what she had to do; it had come to
her while her daughter was weeping over that lying, crawling
whoreson who planted his bastard in her belly.
He’s a
guildmaster, and rich and handsome and he dresses so fine...He said
he loved me, he needed me...He meant to marry me...

Elswyth fetched a sheet of parchment and a
quill and the ink pot and brought them to the work table. Uncapping
the ink jar, she dipped in the quill and wrote To Olive at the top
of the sheet.

You will wonder why I have done what I
have done,
she wrote in the elegant hand that had always been
her pride.
That is why I am writing this letter before I do
it...

* * *

Thomas Harper, sitting in the sun on his
barrel in front of Mistress Joanna’s kitchen hut, inhaled the
unhappy smell of scorched porridge and wondered where she was. She
and the serjant both, for when he’d peered through the windows into
the storeroom, he’d found it empty
—
the first time in a
month and a half that Graeham Fox hadn’t been there.

As the bells of St. Mary-le-Bow rang terce,
the back door of the guildmaster’s blue and red house opened and a
fleshy maidservant emerged with a marketing basket over her arm.
She exchanged a cheery “Good morrow” with the manservant mucking
out the stable and left.

It was much later than Thomas usually broke
his fast, and hunger ground away at his belly. He was sorely
tempted to just walk into the kitchen and dish himself up a bowlful
of porridge. Joanna wouldn’t mind; like most learned people, she
knew his malady to be less contagious than was generally believed.
But if he was seen by one of the neighbors
—
such as the
money lender’s wife, casting him looks of abhorrence as she tended
to her garden
—
he’d be put to death.

A gust of laughter wheezed up out of
Thomas’s chest. Ironic that a pathetic creature such as he should
fear death. For what was he but the walking dead, a gradually
crumbling thing that used to be a man. He’d managed on his own well
enough until now, despite the deadening of his face and arms and
legs, but soon he would lose the last vestiges of his precious
independence, for the thing he’d dreaded for years was at last
beginning to happen. He was going blind in his one good eye. The
vision that used to be crisp as a hawk’s was gradually, inexorably,
growing cloudy around the edges. Soon the murkiness would shroud
everything he saw, and then his world would be one of darkness and
shadow.

He’d be blind and numb. Wherefore should he
fear death?

Disgusted by his lapse into self-pity,
Thomas closed his eyes and conjured up the image of the woman he’d
loved and cast aside when he was young and healthy and foolish, the
woman who still had the power to soothe and comfort him, even in
his imagination.
Thomas, my love,
Bertrada used to whisper
as she caressed his brow, kissed his cheek, took him in her arms.
I’m here for you. I’ll always be here for you. And I’ll always
love you...always...

“Thomas.”

He opened his eyes to find Joanna Chapman
and Graeham Fox standing before him, and made himself smile.
“Mistress,” he said with a nod. “Graeham. I think this is the first
time I’ve seen you out of doors, serjant. Didn’t realize your hair
had quite so much red in it.”

“So it does.” Joanna trailed her fingers
through Graeham’s hair. “It’s lovely in the sunlight.”

Graeham exchanged a smile with her that was
so warm and intimate, Thomas felt like a voyeur having witnessed
it.
Interesting
.

“How do you fare today, Thomas?” asked
Graeham.

Thomas smiled. “Never better. Well, perhaps
that’s overstating it a bit.”

Graeham’s chuckle was weary, a little
pained. He yawned. Joanna yawned, too.

“You two look tired,” Thomas observed.

Graeham smiled at Joanna, who blushed and
looked away.
Very interesting
.

“My porridge smells as if it’s burned to the
pot,” said Mistress Joanna, entering the kitchen. “I’ll have to
throw it out, but it’s a shame to waste the good part on top. Will
you have some of it, Thomas?”