The Burgundian’s Tale

Nineteen

I had intended to go next door, to the St Clairs’ house, as soon as I quit the Jolliffes’; but instead I returned the way I had come and struggled through the crowds, which had now become clogged with sightseers waiting to cheer the Duchess, to Needlers Lane, where I went straight to visit Martha Broderer, relying on the fact that Lionel would be across the street, at the workshop. I looked for Bertram as I went, but he had either not yet finished a protracted breakfast or we missed one another in the throng.

Martha Broderer was still at home and still at table. A dirty bowl and beaker opposite her place suggested that my hopes had been realized and that Lionel had at least left the room, if not the house.

‘If you’re looking for Lal, he’s already gone,’ his mother confirmed. ‘But stay and have a cup of ale with me, chapman, before you seek him out.’

‘It’s you I want to see, not your son,’ I said, pulling up a stool and accepting her offer of ale. When she raised her eyebrows, I went on, ‘I’ve just come from talking to Lydia Jolliffe.’ I added significantly, ‘About Brandon.’

Martha, filling a clean beaker from a jug of small beer, shot me a suddenly apprehensive glance from beneath frowning brows. ‘What about Brandon?’

I took the beaker and swallowed several mouthfuls before replying. But at last, I said, ‘Mistress Jolliffe has admitted to me that Edmund Broderer was Brandon’s father. And Brandon looks extraordinarily like Lionel. My guess is that your son, too, was fathered by Edmund.’

Martha looked at me, her lips compressed, her hands gripped together in front of her, on the table. I was afraid she was about to order me from the house, but, finally, she heaved a great sigh, almost of relief.

‘Edmund and I were once very much in love. He was nineteen, I was fifteen – old enough to know better, perhaps, but not old enough to be wise. At least, I wasn’t. I was already betrothed to Edmund’s cousin, you see. And when I discovered I was pregnant with Edmund’s child, I was too frightened to admit the truth – frightened of the shame and the recriminations. In spite of Edmund’s pleas, I went ahead and married my husband and passed Lionel off as his.

‘Edmund found it hard to forgive me, and who can blame him? But he stayed single for the next eleven years. I don’t mean there weren’t women; there were – a number of them. He was a very virile man. And I must admit that I have often wondered about Brandon Jolliffe’s paternity. The boy bears little resemblance to either of his parents, and the likeness to Lal that you’ve mentioned is really quite marked … Then, quite suddenly, at the age of thirty, Edmund met and married Judith Fennyman, a seamstress in Margaret of York’s household. It must have been the same year as the battles of Mortimer’s Cross and St Alban’s. The same year that King Henry was deposed and the present king crowned. Margaret of York was suddenly of great importance, a member of the reigning dynasty. Edmund told me later that he was never in love with Judith: his mother had died and he didn’t care for the idea of living alone, and Judith had a certain attraction for him, being as she was in the employ of the new princess. Besides, he wanted a child whom he could acknowledge openly as his own.’

‘He was disappointed, then,’ I put in as Martha paused to draw breath.

She nodded. ‘Yes. Judith proved to be barren. But more than that, the year after Edmund and Judith’s marriage, her brother-in-law, James Quantrell, was killed when he was thrown from his horse, and Veronica and Fulk, who was just a baby, went to live at the house in the Strand. Edmund and his sister-in-law didn’t get on. The two women were as thick as thieves, and Edmund felt himself to be an outsider in his own home.

‘This went on for six years and, more and more, he began to turn to me for comfort – I was a widow by this time – and, gradually, all our old love was rekindled. He gave me a gold ring as token of his love, and I gave him a gold-and-agate thumb ring, which he told me he would wear until he died. He promised to tell Judith that he was leaving her for me. He could obtain a divorce, he said, on the grounds of her inability to have children …’

Martha broke off, her voice suspended by tears, so I finished for her. ‘But before that could happen, Edmund Broderer disappeared and no one knew what had happened to him until some time later, when his body was fished out of the Thames, almost unrecognizable.’ I paused, then asked, ‘Didn’t it ever occur to you, Mistress Broderer, how very convenient for Judith his death was?’

Martha gave me another sharp look. ‘Yes, of course it did. But not only Veronica Quantrell, but William Morgan also, swore they were all at home together and didn’t leave the house the night he vanished.’

I made no comment, but finished my beer. ‘Were you surprised,’ I then asked, ‘when Judith married a violent man like Justin Threadgold?’

‘Yes, I must admit I was. But she’s always had this passion for children and young people. I thought she must have married him for Alcina’s sake.’

‘And her passion for Fulk Quantrell?’

Martha laughed, gesturing with one hand. ‘Oh, that’s easy enough to explain! A nephew, her twin sister’s son, whom she hadn’t clapped eyes on for the past twelve years! Handsome and with a tongue dripping with honey! Poor Judith stood no chance. She was lost from the first moment of setting eyes on him.’

‘Yes … I rather fancy that she was,’ I answered slowly. I got to my feet. ‘Well, thank you, Mistress Broderer. I won’t take up any more of your time. You’ve told me what I wanted to know.’

‘Where are you going now?’ she enquired curiously. ‘Do you know yet who killed Fulk Quantrell?’

‘Yes, I think so,’ I said. ‘It’s just a question of whether or not I can get that person to confess.’

Martha looked both excited and a little alarmed. ‘It’s not Lionel, is it?’ she demanded, trembling slightly.

I moved towards the door. ‘Is he aware that Edmund was his father?’ I enquired.

She shook her head. ‘No. I’ve never told him; I’ve never seen the need. Whether or not I would have done, had Edmund and I ever married, I can’t say.’ She sighed again. ‘Maybe I’ll tell him the truth one day, if the moment seems right.’

I thanked her for her time and patience, and left quickly before she realized that I hadn’t answered her question.

‘I’ll let myself out,’ I said. ‘Don’t trouble your maid.’

I made my way back to the Strand, more than ever convinced that I knew the identity of Fulk Quantrell’s murderer.

This time I did see Bertram, although he failed to spot me. With a face like thunder, hot and sweating, he was returning through the Lud Gate and about to climb the hill. I didn’t call out, but carried on along Fleet Street to the bridge, and across the Fleet into the Strand.

Paulina Graygoss answered my knock, but pulled down the corners of her mouth when I asked to see her mistress. ‘You’ll have to come back later,’ she informed me tersely. ‘The mistress is doing her domestic rounds. And there are still details of Master Threadgold’s funeral to arrange. She and Mistress Alcina will be visiting St Dunstan’s later, after dinner. You can wait till then, if you like,’ she added grudgingly.

But I wasn’t prepared to wait. ‘Tell Mistress St Clair I would like to speak to her now,’ I said, drawing a gasp of protest from the housekeeper.

‘I’ll do no such thing,’ she declared roundly. ‘I’ve never heard the like. What impudence! A common chapman to issue his orders to the lady of the house! How dare you!’

One of the doors into the great hall opened and Godfrey St Clair shuffled in, a silk-covered folio (presumably the sayings of Marcus Aurelius) clutched in one hand.

‘What’s the trouble, Paulina?’ he asked, giving me an odd, calculating look that he tried, unsuccessfully, to turn into a welcoming smile. Then, without waiting for her reply, he advanced on me, one hand outheld. ‘Master Chapman! I saw your approach from a window. I’m sorry to tell you that my wife is but just this moment taken with one of her very bad headaches, and is laid down upon her bed.’

Paulina Graygoss gave a startled exclamation of sympathy and at once ordered me from the house. ‘You see now that it’s impossible for you to see the mistress.’

Godfrey silenced her with a wave of his hand. ‘On the contrary, my wife has agreed see you, Master Chapman, if you keep your visit brief and do not object to being received by her in her bedchamber.’

‘Mistress St Clair was expecting me?’

‘She … She thought you might be back … might wish to speak with her again.’ Godfrey seemed ill at ease and his eyes refused to meet mine. ‘I don’t know why,’ he went on, ‘but it was after Mistress Jolliffe called on her a little while ago, just as we were finishing breakfast.’

‘And she’s willing to see me?’

‘I’ve just said so.’

‘In spite of her headache?’ Paulina Graygoss demanded. ‘I ought to go up to her, master, and mix her one of her potions.’

‘No, no!’ Godfrey shuffled his feet. ‘It’s … It’s not as bad as most of her headaches,’ he explained. ‘And as for the potion, I’ve already mixed one for her and she’s already feeling a little better. Besides, she’s so much else to do, she feels she must talk to the pedlar, here, and get it over with. Then, perhaps, he’ll go away and leave us in peace.’ Godfrey turned back to me. ‘So if you don’t object to being received by my wife in her bedchamber, Master Chapman, I’ll take you to her.’

I gave a bow and indicated that he should lead the way. The housekeeper detained me with a hand on my arm.

‘You upset the mistress and you’ll have me to reckon with,’ she threatened in a low, furious voice. ‘Receiving you when she’s suffering from one of her headaches! Whatever next!’

‘That’ll do, Paulina!’ Godfrey exclaimed impatiently. ‘Come along, chapman, please. Mistress St Clair doesn’t like to be kept waiting.’

I followed him meekly up the main staircase and was ushered into the room I had already visited twice before, but, for the first time, I entered through the main bedchamber door.

‘I’ve brought the pedlar, as you see, my love,’ Godfrey muttered, and withdrew hurriedly, closing the door behind him. His attitude was that of a man who, having reluctantly played his part, wanted nothing further to do with the matter. His nervousness was palpable – an unease that should have made me wary but failed to do so because, in some measure, it was Godfrey St Clair’s natural manner.

Judith, fully clothed, was sitting up on the bed, but not in it. She had removed her shoes in order, I presumed, not to dirty the magnificent coverlet, while the bed curtains had been pushed right back to the head of the bed so that the story of Daphnis and Chloe was visible only as streaks of ochre and daubs of terracotta pink.

‘Ah! Roger the Chapman!’ she murmured, somewhat mockingly, I thought. ‘Sit down.’ And she indicated a stool set ready for me by the side of the bed.

She was certainly very pale, but otherwise gave no impression of a woman in the throes of a debilitating headache. A carved wooden cup with a silver rim, which stood on the bedside cupboard beside the candlestick and candle, appeared, from what I could see of it as I sat down, to be full to the top of some brownish liquid. She evidently had not yet swallowed the potion Godfrey had prepared for her, which, again, argued no great degree of discomfort. These signs and portents should have put me on my guard. But, I regret to say, they didn’t.

‘Well?’ she invited, a little smile lifting the corners of her mouth. ‘Do you know now who killed my nephew? And why?’

I didn’t return her smile. ‘I think so,’ I answered.

‘You only “think so”? I expected better of you than that.’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘I do know. But I’ll be honest with you, mistress. I’ve no real proof.’

At that, she laughed. ‘That’s not just being honest,’ she said. ‘That’s being foolhardy. So! You’ve no proof unless the murderer confesses?’

‘No. Only suspicions. And if the Dowager Duchess of Burgundy refuses to accept those suspicions–’

‘Which she doubtless will!’

‘Which, as you say, she doubtless will, then there is nothing further I can do in this matter.’

Judith nodded thoughtfully. ‘On the other hand,’ she said, ‘suspicion, like mud, tends to stick and can ruin a life quite effectively. Although, of course, one still has that life, which must be preferable to a painful death. So I can’t promise you that you’ll get your confession, chapman.’ She closed her eyes for a moment or two before suddenly opening them wide and turning them intently on me.

‘Tell me, then,’ she said, looking down her masterful nose, ‘what made you first suspect me?’

I considered this. ‘I think it was when you told me that your nephew had been murdered in Faitour Lane. This, of course, was perfectly true, but his body was later shifted by two of the beggars round the corner into Fleet Street and left outside St Dunstan’s Church.’

‘A very foolish mistake,’ Judith commented harshly, plainly angry with herself, as well as with me for picking it up. ‘So that’s how the corpse came to be moved, is it? I did wonder … Go on! What else?’

‘I found it odd that, after Fulk’s death, you changed your will back again to its original form with such speed. Not much in itself, perhaps, but when I thought about it, it suggested to me a desire to erase Fulk from your life as soon as possible – a desire to right a wrong for the people you truly cared for: your husband, Mistress Alcina and Master Jocelyn. Even, perhaps, Lionel Broderer. As I said: a feeling, not evidence.’

Judith pursed her lips. ‘No, not evidence,’ she agreed. ‘You’ve mentioned nothing so far that I couldn’t refute. So? What more? Or isn’t there anything?’

I sat up straighter on my stool and eased my aching shoulders. ‘You haven’t asked me yet’, I pointed out, ‘why I think you killed your nephew.’

She laughed. ‘Very well, then. Why did I murder Fulk, Master Chapman? Although I’m sure you’ve worked it out.’

‘Because he was threatening you.’

‘Indeed? And why would he be able to do that?’

‘Because Fulk wasn’t the first person you’d killed, was he, mistress? Twelve years ago you murdered your first husband. And I think – indeed, I’m almost sure – that if I were to dig beneath that willow tree in your garden, I should probably find his bones.’

There was silence, eventually broken by a deep sigh as Judith propped herself a little higher on her pillows. ‘I think you’re forgetting that Edmund Broderer was dragged from the river several weeks after he disappeared,’ she reminded me.

‘No, I’m not forgetting. But a body that’s been in the Thames for that length of time would be almost unrecognizable. Except, of course, by his loving wife who identified him by the shape of his feet and some intimate bodily mark.’

The slightly tolerant smile had by now quite vanished and her eyes were like steel. ‘You have been asking a lot of questions, Master Chapman,’ she snapped. ‘And, seemingly, getting a lot of answers. So tell me! Why would I have wanted to kill Edmund Broderer?’

It was my turn to smile. ‘I wasn’t sure until young Bertram Serifaber mistook Lionel for Brandon Jolliffe, and then I realized the likeness betwen them myself. And when I found young Roger Jessop, Nell’s half-brother – you remember Roger Jessop, don’t you? The young lad who used to work in your garden – and saw that he, too, bore a strong resemblance to the other two, I started to believe that they might all have been sired by the same father. This morning, therefore, I talked not only to Mistress Jolliffe but also to Martha Broderer. Both women were quite frank with me about their relationship with your former husband.’

‘A lot of men have bastards,’ my companion sneered. ‘Men are like that: incontinent where their need for women is concerned. But their long-suffering wives don’t murder them. They endure, like our poor Queen.’

‘Maybe,’ I agreed. ‘But what if a woman’s husband is proposing to leave her for his former sweetheart, his cousin’s widow? What if he’s talking of obtaining a divorce because of that wife’s barrenness? What if this woman cannot bear the thought of being abandoned and humiliated for a woman she despises?’

‘What if! What if!’ Judith St Clair broke in angrily. ‘It seems to me there’s more “what if” about your suspicions than substance. And what makes you think Edmund is buried beneath my willow tree?’

‘You’re very fond of that spot. People have told me so. Yesterday, when you invited me into your garden to stand with you under the tree, I had the feeling that you were secretly laughing at me. Mocking me. Taunting me, perhaps, with the evidence buried beneath our feet. Call me fanciful if you like, but that is how it struck me.’

She gave a hard, artificial little laugh. ‘I certainly do call it fanciful! Do you think anyone would be convinced by such nonsense?’

‘Probably not. But someone might be more interested in the fact that young Roger Jessop, a child raised and nurtured by you from his earliest days, suddenly ran away because, after a series of odd mishaps and near “accidents”, he grew to believe that his life was in danger. I wondered why that should be, until I learned from William Morgan and from you that he had been digging around the willow. The lad didn’t find anything; his suspicions of anything, or anyone, being buried there weren’t even slightly aroused. But you couldn’t take the chance of letting him live.’

My companion was really angry now. She was also beginning to be frightened. But she wasn’t as yet seriously alarmed. ‘Is that all?’ she sneered.

‘No,’ I said. ‘There’s the mystery of why you married your second husband, Justin Threadgold. Everyone I’ve spoken to, including his own brother and daughter, says that he was a violent, abusive man. So why, knowing this, did you agree to become his wife?’

‘For Alcina’s sake,’ she whipped back at me.

‘That’s the impression you’ve always given to other people, and it seems, on the face of it, to be the only reason that makes sense. But you were rich and the Threadgolds were poor. Suppose, therefore, like Fulk after him, Justin blackmailed you. Into marrying him.’

‘How could he do that?’ Judith flung at me contemptuously, but I saw her lick her lips.

I gave her back look for look. ‘That little room of the Threadgolds’, above the fireplace, looks out over your garden with a clear view of the willow tree. Only, of course, there wasn’t a tree the night Justin saw you and your sister and William Morgan burying your first husband’s body. I don’t suppose he guessed at once what you were up to, but when Edmund Broderer went missing, and his body turned up in such a state that only you could recognize it, he put two and two together. He probably claimed to have seen more than he did, but you weren’t to know that. Or you daren’t take that chance. The price of his silence was marriage. I wonder what death you were planning for him, if he hadn’t died of natural causes.’

Judith laughed and abandoned all pretence. ‘Oh, I’d have thought of something,’ she assured me. ‘Of course, I couldn’t dispose of him immediately. It would have looked too suspicious. I had to wait a year or two. And then, as you say, my plans weren’t needed … Well! Continue! What other proof of my guilt do you have to offer me?’

‘You have twice had me assaulted by your loyal henchman William Morgan. At first, I was puzzled as to why such a loutish, insubordinate man should hold a privileged position in your household. Later, of course, I understood. He’s your tame boarhound. You obviously instructed him not to kill me. My death would have been a great mistake, as I feel sure you agreed. You just wanted me warned off – to go back to Bristol.’

‘Dear William! He’s a man who knows the meaning of loyalty, unlike my nephew.’ Judith spoke with venom.

‘Ah, yes! Fulk! You never were enamoured of him, as everyone thought, but you had to play the part of his choosing. What happened? Before she died, did your sister tell him the truth of what happened that night when he was six years old? The night she helped you bury the husband you had killed, while Fulk was asleep in bed? Your twin had a reputation at the Burgundian court – did you know? – of winkling out fellow servants’ more disgraceful secrets and using that knowledge against them. “Like mother, like son,” I was told, and that seems to have been the truth.’

‘I’d never have thought it of my own sister,’ Judith hissed. ‘My twin! She turned out to have been a viper who’d given birth to a venomous toad.’ She leaned forward, her headache apparently forgotten, and gripped my wrist. ‘You’re right. Almost from the moment of his arrival Fulk made it clear that he knew everything, and intended to take full advantage of what he knew. I was to play the role of loving, besotted aunt and make a new will, leaving everything – everything! – to him, or he would tell Duchess Margaret the truth. Veronica was dead and he had been too young to be involved in Edmund’s murder. There was only me left to take the blame.’

‘Incidentally,’ I interrupted, ‘how did you kill Master Broderer?’

‘I stabbed him with a carving knife that happened to be on the table with the remains of our supper, which he’d missed. Edmund came into the dining parlour after we’d eaten. He’d been drinking, but he wasn’t drunk. Certainly not enough for me to disbelieve him when he told me he was turning me and my family out of his house to make way for Martha Broderer. I was so furious that, almost without knowing what I was doing, I seized the knife and stabbed him through the heart … Later, Veronica and William Morgan helped me strip his body and bury it at the bottom of the garden, by the river. (It was Justin who planted the willow tree over the spot. He thought it a joke.) Then I gave out that Edmund had never come home. People naturally assumed that he must have fallen in the river. So many drunkards end that way. Then all I had to do was to wait until a naked, suitably decomposed body was fished out of the Thames and claim it as my husband’s.’

‘But you made the mistake of keeping his things,’ I said, ‘including the gold-and-agate thumb ring that Martha Broderer had given him.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘How do you know that? Have you been in this room without my knowledge?’

There was no point in denying it, and we had gone past the point of fencing with one another.

‘Twice,’ I admitted.

‘And you discovered the “fly trap”?’ I nodded. ‘How?’

I explained and she swore fluently.

‘How did you murder your nephew?’ I interrupted her.

‘Oh, that was easy. I knew he was going to St Dunstan’s that evening, it being the Feast of Saint Sigismund. I simply retired to bed with one of my headaches and, later, left the house by the “secret” stair, wearing a suit of Edmund’s clothes and one of his cloaks. I went out by the garden door, over the wall into the alley, and from there to Fleet Street, where I waited outside the church until Fulk came out. There were too many people around to do it then, so I followed him into Faitour Lane’ – she curled her lip – ‘where he had business at one of the brothels. I had one of Godfrey’s cudgels hidden under my cloak and I bludgeoned him to death with that.’

I shivered. ‘You’re a formidable woman, Mistress St Clair. And the wine you sent by Alcina to Martin Threadgold? What was that laced with? Poppy and lettuce juice? It must have been an easy matter then for either you or the devoted William to smother him with the cushion. You thought he knew something and was going to tell me, didn’t you? William Morgan had overheard my conversation with the housekeeper.’

Judith suddenly let go of my arm and swung her feet over the edge of the bed, so that she was standing beside me. ‘Let me show you something,’ she said. ‘Come! It’s just over here.’

And like a fool, I followed her.