Sacrilege

‘I had heard that many Huguenots came to England to escape the religious persecution,’ I said.

‘Canterbury is one of their largest communities. They are really the best of people,’ she added warmly, and instantly I disliked this Olivier all the more.

‘But tell me how your husband died, then,’ I said, wanting to change the subject.

Sophia passed a hand across her face and held it for a moment over her mouth, as if gathering up the strength for this part of the story. Eventually she laid her hands flat on the table and looked me directly in the eye.

‘For six months, I endured this marriage, if that is what you want to call it. I was known as Kate Kingsley, and my official history was that my father, a distant cousin of Sir Edward’s, had recently died, leaving me an orphan with a useful parcel of land in Rutland. I suppose he thought that was far enough away that no one would be likely to check. When I appeared with him in public, I was demure and well turned-out, which was all anyone seemed to expect of me. And at home, I was regularly beaten and forced to endure what he called my wifely duty, which he liked to perform with violence, though he was always careful never to leave marks on my skin where it might show.’ She flexed her hands, trying to keep her expression under control.

‘How did you bear it?’

She shrugged.

‘It is surprising how much you can bear, when you are obliged to – as you must know, Bruno. My greatest fear was that I would get another child, he forced himself on me so often, and I knew I could never love any child of his. With every month that passed, I worried my luck would not hold. Lately I had started to think about running away. Olivier was going to help me.’

I’m sure he was, I thought, uncharitably.

‘Did your husband suspect?’

‘I don’t think so. He was always preoccupied with his own business. In fact, from the first days in that house, I’d begun to notice odd things about my husband’s behaviour.’

‘Aside from his violent streak, you mean?’

‘Odder than that, even. He was often out of the house at strange hours, leaving in the dead of night and returning towards dawn. Once I asked him where he’d been when he got into bed with the cold air of night still on him, and he fetched me such a slap to my jaw that I feared I would lose a tooth.’ She rubbed the side of her face now at the memory of it. ‘After that, I always pretended to be asleep when he came in.’

‘So he was a man with secrets. Women, do you suppose?’

She shot me a scornful look.

‘When he had a whore ready at his disposal in the comfort of his own home, at no extra charge?’ She shook her head. ‘I told you, my husband didn’t like to part with money if it could be avoided. No, there was something else he was up to, but I never found out what. Underneath the house there was a cellar that he always kept locked, with the key on a chain at his belt. And sometimes his friends would come to the house late at night.’ Her face darkened. ‘By his friends, I mean some of the most eminent men of the city. My husband was a lay canon at the cathedral, as well as being magistrate, so he was a person of influence. They would shut themselves in his study and talk for hours. Once I tried to listen at the door, and it seemed they were arguing among themselves, but I could not stay long enough to hear anything useful – the old housekeeper found me there in the passageway and shooed me off to bed. She said Sir Edward would kill me if he caught me there, truly kill me, and she had such fear in her face that I believed it was a serious warning, honestly meant.’ She paused to take another bite of bread. ‘But two weeks ago he had been up to the cathedral, to a meeting of the Chapter, as he often did, and afterwards he was to take his supper with the Dean. He never came home.’

‘What happened?’

‘One of the canons appeared at my door, about nine o’clock at night, with two constables. He had found Edward’s body in the cathedral precincts. He must have been on his way home when he was attacked.’

‘How did he die?’

‘Struck down with a heavy weapon from behind, they said, and beaten repeatedly while he lay there until his skull smashed. They said his hands were all broken and bloodied, as if he’d been trying to cover his face.’ She pressed her lips together. ‘I wasn’t sorry – the man was a brute. But it must have been a dreadful way to die. His brains were all spilled over the flagstones, they told me.’

‘His brains …’ The detail sounded familiar, as if I had heard the description before, but I could not place it. ‘You did not have to see it, I hope?’

‘No, they took the body away. It was a vicious act. The killer must have been someone who violently hated him.’

‘Were there people who hated him that much?’

‘Apart from his wife, you mean?’ She gave me a wry glance.

I acknowledged the truth of this with a dip of my head. ‘But you said no one knew how he treated you in private. So how did they come to suspect you?’

She poked at a piece of bread and leaned in.

‘I had the wit to realise when the canon came that if I didn’t give him a good show of shock and grief he would find that curious, to say the least. He handed me the sword that my husband had been wearing, still sheathed, and his gold signet ring, all daubed in blood. I played the distraught widow, thinking that would make them go away.’

‘I find it hard to imagine you in that role,’ I said, with a fond smile. She almost returned it.

‘Oh, you would be surprised, Bruno, how convincing I can be. He said the body had been taken to the coroner and asked if I wanted someone to sit with me that night, to save me being alone. I thanked him and said I had old Meg, the housekeeper, for company – that was stupid of me, because it was Meg’s day off and she had gone to visit a friend, but I just wanted him to go so I could stop pretending to cry and enjoy an untroubled night’s sleep. I could hardly explain to him that I wanted more than anything to be left on my own, for once.’

‘Did he know you were lying?’

‘Not at the time. He went away, and perhaps an hour later my husband’s son, Nicholas, came home, with the smell of the alehouse on him. The constables had found him in there with his friends and given him the news. He was cursing and shouting at me in his drunken rage that it was all my doing. He said nothing had gone right in that house since the day his father brought me into it.’ She paused, and I saw the anger flash across her face before she mastered it. ‘Then – well, I’ll spare you the details. Suffice to say, he thought he could take his father’s place in the marriage bed.’

‘Holy Mother!’ I drew a hand across my mouth and felt my other fist bunch under the table.

‘Don’t worry, I fought him off.’ She gave a brief, bitter laugh. ‘I was damned if I was taking that from the son as well. Fortunately, he was too drunk to put up much of a fight. But he was sober enough to be angered by the refusal. He told me I would get what was coming to me, gave me a slap for good measure, and stumbled and crashed his way to his own room.’

‘What did he mean by that threat?’

‘I hardly dared sleep that night – I thought he might come in and attack me while I lay in my bed. But I heard him leave the house early, at first light. I fell asleep again and the next I knew, old Meg the housekeeper was shaking me awake, whispering frantically that I had to run.’

‘Run? Why?’

‘She’d met the cathedral gatekeeper on her way back to the house. He’d come to find her, to say that the constables had discovered evidence at the scene to arrest me for the murder of my husband and were on their way round. I barely had time to get dressed. Fortunately I knew where my husband kept his strongbox.’

‘In his mysterious locked cellar?’

She shook her head.

‘No. Whatever was in there, it was not money. He kept that in various chests in the room he called his library, and the keys were hidden in a recess in the chimney breast. I took two pursefuls of gold angels, which was all I could carry, and fled through the kitchen yard.’

‘So …’ I sat back, feeling almost breathless at the pace of her tale. ‘Where did you go? What was this evidence – did you ever find out? Surely this Nicholas had something to do with it?’

‘One question at a time, Bruno. I ran through the back streets to Olivier’s house. His parents had already heard about Sir Edward’s murder – news spreads quickly in a cathedral city, where everyone knows everyone. But they didn’t know I was to be accused of it. They offered to hide me for a while, but I was afraid it would be too dangerous for them – the Huguenots are already treated with suspicion in the city, just because they are foreigners who keep close within their own community and try to preserve their own customs. We English are not terribly accommodating in that regard, I’m afraid.’

‘I have noticed.’

‘Later that same day, old Meg came by to tell us she had been questioned by the constables. They learned, of course, that I had lied about being at home with her the previous evening – poor thing, she had no idea I had told them that. But apparently early that morning someone had found a pair of women’s gloves, stained with blood, thrown on the ground in the cathedral precincts. Put that together with my lying about Meg, stealing my husband’s money and taking flight, they think they have all the answer they need.’

She folded her arms and dropped her head to stare at the table, as if the account had exhausted her.

‘Well, that is absurd,’ I said, indignant on her behalf. ‘Were they your gloves?’

She hesitated.

‘I don’t know – one pair of gloves looks much like any other, doesn’t it? I certainly wasn’t wearing them. But how am I to prove otherwise? When my husband was respected and influential, and I have no money of my own even to pay a lawyer? I’m sure it won’t take long for someone to uncover Mistress Kate’s real name and past, and that will be seen as proof of my degeneracy.’

‘Someone has tried to ensure you were blamed for this murder. Did this Nicholas, the son, know who you really were?’

She shook her head.