Court of Conspiracy (21 page)

“You are an amazing woman, Bertila.”

She laughed. “No, Luke Ballard, I am not. I am a practical woman. Did you know that Father hoped that you and I would...?” She broke off, biting her lip.

Luke squirmed. He had known only too well how disappointed Corbin had been. The truth was that he was not the stuff of which husbands were made.

“I have always regarded you as a sister,” he stammered. “The same as I look on Will as a brother.”

He glanced at her face, worried lest she take it as another betrayal. To his relief, she laughed again. “That’s what I told Father. Let us talk of something else. What have you been doing of late?”

“The usual sort of thing. The shop is often full as soon as I open the shutters. That keeps me busy.”

“And do you still insist on charging nothing?”

“If a body is in need of medicine, that is something I can help. If I can cure ills, why should the fact that the patient has no money be a barrier to them getting well again? Why should it not be free?”

“You will never be a rich man, Luke.”

“No, but I have a few clients who pay over the odds and trust no other apothecary, so it all balances out in the end.”

“Wasn’t it you who told me life must always be in balance?”

“Aye, it was. But I have to say, Bertila, that since the hanging of that poor stable boy and now this trouble with Pippa, everything has been very much out of balance.”

“Do you mean the boy who put the rose stem under the King’s saddle?”

“That’s what he was hanged for, aye. His mother was out of her wits with grief. She died less than a week later, in church.” He heard Bertila’s sharp intake of breath and sat up, putting a hand on her arm. “What is it? Are you in pain?”

Bertila’s face was white and he could see that her breathing was fast and ragged. “In church?”

“Aye, the church—”

“Luke. It was I who found her!”

Chapter Twenty-Three

Luke leaned forward. “Thank God,” he said, putting out a hand to her.

“What do you mean?”

“One of the kitchen boys told me that a young woman had found Goodwife Pitt, but vanished before the Beadle could question her. I am sorry to put it so baldly, Bertila, but I desperately need to know what happened. Will you tell me?”

“Why?”

For answer he leaned forward and took her hand. “Have I not always been a good brother to you? Will you not trust me now?”

She thought for a few moments, then straightened up in her chair. “There has always been confidence between us, Luke. I would trust you with my life. What do you want me to do?”

“Tell me everything you can remember from the time you opened the church door. Why were you there?”

She flushed a deep red and her pale scar stood out even more than usual. It took her a few moments to gain mastery over her voice. “I went to thank God for sending me Geoffrey.”

“Oh, Bertila.”

She took a deep breath and carried on, but he could see the effort it took not to let the tears gathering in her eyes spill over onto her cheeks. “I wanted to say a prayer to Saint Catherine, to thank her for sending me a husband.”

Luke leaned forward. “My dear girl, I had no idea it had gone that far. Forget this. We can talk another day when you feel less...less stricken.”

“No, no. It will do me good to think of something else. Ask your questions.”

Luke, aware of Bertila’s emotional fragility, wanted to ensure that she did not suffer in any way from his questioning, but he had to discover everything she could tell him about that night. He could not use the probing powder on her. It was far too strong. “In that case, trust me enough to close your eyes.” He took a garnet from the bag of gems given him by Dufay. It would protect Bertila from harm and enhance the communication between them. He rolled the stone between his fingers until it began to glow, centering the light on Bertila’s brow. “Be conscious only of your breath going in and out. Now, take the eye of your mind back to the moment you put your hand on the latch of the church door. Tell me what you see,” he said, his voice soft.

She frowned a little in concentration, but he knew from the blankness of her face that she was in a trance-sleep. “The door is already slightly open. I do not have to turn the handle. I step down onto the floor. At first, everything seems as it should be. Then, as I walk up the aisle, I feel frightened. I cannot understand why I should feel such dread in church, under the protection of God, and that makes my fear grow. So I force my steps as far as the chancel step.” Bertila paused, her face showing evidence of the fear she had experienced. “I look down,” she continued. “At first, I think it is a bundle of rags, but then I see a foot. It is a woman.”

Luke’s concentration was total. For Bertila to come out of her trance too early would not only impede his investigation, but further damage her spirit. Much as he felt the weight of loyalty to the King and Queen and the ever-present fear of the consequences should he fail to complete his mission, his first thought must be for this girl’s safety. If he owed her nothing else, he owed her that.

“Go on,” he said softly.

“I bend down. She has fallen onto her side, almost as if she has been on her knees and just keeled over like some of the ships do at low tide.”

Luke stifled an exclamation as he saw again his vision of the hound looming over the woman and her sideways fall.

“Her face is twisted,” Bertila said. “Almost as if she had seen something so terrible that her brain could not encompass the horror and she died of it.” The girl’s voice had risen.

“You are quite safe, Bertila. I will not let any harm come to you. Bend over, nearer to her face. Can you see anything else?”

She swallowed and put out a hand as if to ward something off. “Everything has lost its color.”

“Explain.”

“She is dressed in black. Her eyes are black. Her face is white. There is no color in her.”

“Can you smell anything?”

There was a pause. “There is a sweet sickly smell. I think she has vomited, but there is no sign of it here.”

“Can you touch her skin?”

“I do not want to. I am afraid.”

“I am protecting you, Bertila. You are quite safe. Please put the backs of your fingers onto her cheek. Tell me how it feels.”

Her voice rose as if in panic. “It is cold and clammy as if she has been sleeping somewhere damp.”

“Has anyone else asked you these questions?”

“No. My father was concerned because I was upset. He gave me mulled ale to drink.”

Luke could feel that she was only just holding on to her senses. He took both her hands in his. “Come back, Bertila. You are safe and warm in your father’s house. Come back now. Open your eyes.”

As she did so, Luke could see how unfocussed they were. He poured some ale into a beaker, added some cloves and cinnamon and warmed it. He knew she was in no fit state to mark what he did.

He gave her the warm drink and passed his other hand over her hair, being careful not to touch her. “Drink this and forget. If anyone asks you about the woman in the church, you need only say that you found her and fetched the Beadle. The Beadle said she had had a seizure. Drink it all. It will do you good and make you feel warm and safe.”

Luke sat in silence whilst Bertila sipped. “Do you feel warmer now?” he asked, taking the empty cup from her.

“Aye,” she said her voice back to its normal strength. “What happened? Have I been asleep? You were going to ask me some questions about the church.”

“I only wanted to ask you about the woman you found.”

“I fetched the Beadle,” Bertila replied. “He said that she had had a seizure. I came away. That is all I know.”

Thinking over what she had said, he was again struck with foreboding by the ease with which she had slipped into a trance. He thought back to his own vision of the huge black hound and the woman’s dead body slipping sideways onto the stone floor. There were a few tests he performed to verify events, and he decided that tomorrow he would do them. He had the necessary ingredients in stock. If Gethin’s mother had been killed by black arts, then it proved beyond doubt that he was ranged against the sunderers.

Peveril’s treachery had cut Bertila deeply. With a certainty he found difficult to explain, Luke knew that her heartsickness would cause a bodily malaise that he could only pray he would be able to mend. He could only hope that Bertila would recover and be heart-whole again. Failing that, he prayed she would ask her father to send for him when she became ill.

* * *

Luke met Corbin a little way from the house. His old master looked at him without smiling.

“Well?”

“I told her, sir. She took it with her usual calm, but I do not think that we can understand yet how deeply she is injured by it.” Luke paused, uncertain how to phrase his next question. “Sir, may I ask you to send news to me if Bertila falls ill?”

“Why? Do you not think I can physick her better than you?”

“It is not her bodily ills that concern me, sir. Those I know you can treat far better than anyone. It is the hurt to her spirit that troubles me.”

Corbin wagged his finger under Luke’s nose.

“And how would you deal with that? I think, Master Ballard, you have done quite enough damage for one day. I would prefer not to see you again for some time.”

Luke bowed. “As you wish, sir, but again, will you please send news if Bertila falls ill and does not seem to get well again? She is as dear to me as a sister. You know that.”

Corbin’s shoulders sagged. “If she falls ill and wishes it, I will send for you.”

“Thank you, sir. Now I must return to my house and put it in order.”

Corbin grunted and turned on his heel and strode into his house. Luke watched the door close, then he, too, turned and made for the distant palace. It had been an eventful day, one which he was not anxious to think about, but he knew he reasoned better when he was walking.

It was clear that whatever force had knocked him senseless last night was from the
malus nocte
. It was equally clear that the same force had been present in the tavern and had seen him talking to John Bell. He berated himself that he had been concentrating so much on the clarifying spell that he had not thought to check his surroundings. Well, he had paid the price for that inattention and lost the chance of examining the rose stem and trying to match its thorns to the holes in the glove.

He was surprised by his first study period with Dufay, but the idea of becoming an Inquiring Elemancer appealed very much to his innate sense of justice and fair play. When he remembered the impotent feeling that Gethin’s arrest and execution had engendered, he knew that he had a choice. Either to never again let himself be caught up in events likely to make him feel so helpless, or to actively seek out a way of redressing the balance for those poor souls who had nobody to speak for them. He was not so arrogant as to assume that he could be a defender of the poor, but if by becoming an Inquiring Elemancer he could save one innocent soul from Gethin’s fate, then he would count his life useful and well lived.

Dufay had promised his help with calculations and it was not until he was halfway over the park that he realized the Elemagus had already spun the math ability into his head. He would need it to complete his first task on the path to being a Dominus, that of enclosing his entire body so that he appeared invisible to others. It was not so much a spell as a series of complicated triangulations and reckonings that deflected light away from him. Dufay had assured him that, so long as he did not move quickly, nobody would notice his presence. He would, appear as a patch of shadow, much as Joss did when he used the shimmer spell, but without the premeditation required by the oils. He would practice in his bedroom at first, until he was confident, and then try it elsewhere. There were a few rooms he would like to be able to enter without the occupants knowing he was present, a skill that could well prove useful in this current investigation.

Luke acknowledged that on a personal level his first goal was to identify the man behind Gethin’s wrongful execution. The fact that, in his mind, that same gentleman was also responsible for the attempts on the King’s life meant that he was more concerned about the murder of a peasant boy than the attempts on the King’s life. It would not do to confess that to anyone. Indeed, it would be more than foolhardy to do so.

Thinking about Gethin made him remember Bertila’s account of finding Goodwife Pitt’s body. Especially stark had been her description of the woman’s face being white and her eyes black. He felt sure that the battle between good and evil in the church had rendered the surroundings black and white. It seemed beyond doubt that the woman had been fed some poison. Fast acting, but not so fast that she had not had time to vomit before dragging herself to the church. Poor soul, she must have known her fate, and her only thought had been to claim the sanctuary of God’s house.

Bertila’s clear picture of the scene led to another worrying thought. Luke had never tried to put Corbin’s daughter in any kind of trance before, so, in theory, it should have been difficult to put her under, even taking the fact that she trusted him into account. What could that mean? Possibly that she was susceptible or, more likely, that she had unknowingly come under some influence that made her spirit more malleable? An evil influence, perhaps? His mind saw the laughing, sardonic face of Geoffrey Peveril even as his fair-minded inner voice told him he had no proof at all that Peveril was anything other than a light-minded knave.

He felt in his cuff for the small pearl that Dufay had given him. Its affinity was with water just as Pippa’s was. It had the qualities of purity and innocence and would, the Elemagus had assured him, allow him to see when someone he questioned was telling the truth. It was time to put it into Pippa’s hand and find out what was going on.

He had almost reached home when the familiar figure of the baker hailed him.

“I thought it was you, Master Ballard. Have you heard the news?”

“What news?”

“The Mewsmaster. John Bell is dead.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

The baker’s report shook Luke more than anything that had yet happened today. He stood as a statue, staring at Twelvetrees, who clapped him on the shoulder, concern clouding his eyes.

“Did you know John Bell, Master Ballard?”

“Not well, but I spoke to him in the tavern last night.”

“Then the authorities will want to speak to you. Take my counsel. Go, seek them out before some flapping mouth tells them and they come looking for you.”

Luke nodded. “I thank you. It is sound advice and I will take it.”

He cut back across the front of the green, walked to the guards on the main gate and asked for Byram Creswell.

“He is in the Counting House, Master Ballard.”

It was not a long walk to the Counting House, but long enough for Luke to berate himself for being a jolthead. His actions had been instrumental in the death of another man, although Bell had been far from innocent. It had been his hand that had put the rose under the horse’s saddle and he who was directly responsible for Gethin’s death. But Bell had not been the moving spirit behind this plot. The real traitor had now caused two deaths, had chosen evil because, presumably, he wanted power and importance. Aye, the man Luke hunted considered himself higher than God and thought of nothing except hate, fear and power. Bell had been lucky, his death being much less terrible than the judicial one he should have suffered. In the usual run of things, it would not be too difficult to spot such a man, but in the rarefied scrabbling world of the royal court, all the major figures would have the same ambition. To gain their desires at whatever cost. The stain of an innocent death would be lost on their souls. No, this man would not be easy to single out. Few around the monarch had any love or humility toward their fellow men.

The Captain was leaving the Counting House when Luke accosted him.

“I understand Master Bell from the stables is dead?”