A Rustle of Silk: A new forensic mystery series set in Stuart England (A Gabriel Taverner Mystery) Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Recent Titles by Alys Clare from Severn House

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Part Two

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Postscript

  Recent Titles by Alys Clare from Severn House

  The Gabriel Taverner Mysteries

  A RUSTLE OF SILK

  The Hawkenlye Series

  THE PATHS OF THE AIR

  THE JOYS OF MY LIFE

  THE ROSE OF THE WORLD

  THE SONG OF THE NIGHTINGALE

  THE WINTER KING

  A SHADOWED EVIL

  The Norman Aelf Fen Series

  OUT OF THE DAWN LIGHT

  MIST OVER THE WATER

  MUSIC OF THE DISTANT STARS

  THE WAY BETWEEN THE WORLDS

  LAND OF THE SILVER DRAGON

  BLOOD OF THE SOUTH

  THE NIGHT WANDERER

  A RUSTLE OF SILK

  A Gabriel Taverner Mystery

  Alys Clare

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain and the USA 2016 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.

  This eBook edition first published in 2016 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Trade paperback edition first published in

  Great Britain and the USA 2017 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD

  Copyright © 2016 by Alys Clare.

  The right of Alys Clare to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8656-9 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-758-6 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-824-7 (e-book)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

  PART ONE

  ONE

  April 1603

  ‘So, Doctor Gabriel, we’re to get that Scots Mary’s lad, just like they predicted,’ Sallie said. She had her back to me, her wide rump swaying to the rhythm of her vigorous polishing of the sideboard.

  Very slowly and quietly, I bent forward and banged my head several times on the gleaming surface of my oak table. It was at least the fifth remark of this sort that my housekeeper had made since she came into my study to ‘tidy up’, as she would have it. I had been hoping to have a peaceful morning of hard work – I had so much to learn – but I wasn’t going to be allowed that dubious pleasure until I had made some sort of response.

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed.

  It wasn’t much of a reply, but even the single word was sufficient to open the gates and allow Sallie’s spring tide of garrulousness to surge forth.

  ‘Well, like I’ve said all along, it’s a mystery to me,’ she began, stopping her polishing as suddenly as if she’d been turned to stone and, leaning her backside comfortably against my table, fixing me with a stern look. ‘Twenty-five years back, and the Queen – God rest her – was sending the order to have the young fellow’s mother’s head cut off! Not that I blame her for that, mind,’ she added hurriedly – the late Queen Elizabeth had been her idol. ‘Now she’s named this green boy as her successor! What are we to make of it, Doctor?’

  She had taken to referring to me thus. While it is perfectly correct – the reward for three of the most mentally demanding years of my life – nevertheless, I wished she wouldn’t. I sounded like a stranger to myself.

  I gathered my thoughts to form an answer. ‘James can hardly be described as a boy,’ I said mildly, ‘since he is thirty-seven years old, and if by green you mean inexperienced, he’s not that either since he’s already King of Scotland and has been for thirty years and more. Besides,’ I added, trying to sound as if I was firmly concluding the conversation, ‘he is the only male blood relation that the late Queen had.’

  Elizabeth had said, so the tale went, who but a prince should follow a prince? Enigmatic right to the end, those close to her had interpreted her meaning correctly – or so we all supposed – and now James VI of Scotland was to become James I of England, and our new monarch. How he would make out, attempting to fill the huge boots of his charismatic, infuriating, powerful, feeble, contradictory, loved, hated predecessor, we waited, in some trepidation, to discover.

  Sallie was still chattering on, and now we were far down the tunnel of memory and back in the golden days of Queen Elizabeth, when Gloriana had been worshipped as a red-haired goddess whose dainty feet danced the Volta while her shrewd, clever brain – she was, after all, her father’s child – plotted ceaselessly, ruthlessly and, for the most part, efficiently.

  I stopped listening.

  Suddenly Sallie’s eyes happened to light on the book lying open on my table. Belatedly I covered the illustration with a blank sheet of vellum, but Sallie’s open mouth, and the fact that she stopped talking in mid-sentence, suggested the damage was done.

  She gave me a very odd look, then, without another word, picked up her dusters, her broom and her beeswax and lavender polish, and swept out of the room. As her footsteps trotted away up the passage, I distinctly heard her loud, judgemental sniff.

  I couldn’t blame her for the reaction. I was studying the female reproductive system and even if Sallie might not be very good at reading the words, she would have understood the diagrams. I sighed. I’d have to find a way of making it right with her, or else I would suffer a week of my least favourite foods served up, half cold like as not, for my supper.

  Resolutely I dragged my thoughts away from King James, Sallie and the prospect of seven days of pallid and unappetizing meals featuring salt cod, and applied myself to my studies.

  I have spent the greater part of my life at sea, latterly as a ship’s surgeon. Land-bound these six years, I had hoped to set up as a sawbones, barber surgeon – whatever you prefer to call it – in Plymouth, the closest busy town to my home. The numerous existing sawbones and barber surgeons, however, had other ideas. Medicine being all that I knew, all that I could do or wanted
to do, hurriedly I reviewed my options, and made the difficult decision to go to London and gain a qualification as a physician. I achieved my aim – just about – and now I was trying to establish my practice.

  Which was why, that sunny morning in early April, I was studying the female body. My life on board the late Queen’s ships had taught me a great deal, and I knew as much as any surgeon about broken limbs, amputation, sewing up deep wounds, preventing infection in the lashed back of a flogged sailor, how to recognize a variety of diseases and do what I could for the poor sufferer, how to treat the wide variety of injuries to which men on a sailing ship were prone. But my life at sea had left a vast gap in my knowledge and experience: I knew next to nothing about women. My recent years of training had naturally gone some way towards redressing the balance, although I knew I still had a long way to go. Since a doctor could scarcely call himself by the name if his expertise only extended to half the human race – not even that, for I also had yet to experience at first hand the mysteries of most of the wide range of childhood maladies – I was determined to study as hard as I must until I felt fully confident.

  The bright day passed. I worked on, my concentration so intense that I was only vaguely aware of goings-on around me. The sweet smells of spring floated in through the open study window, briefly interrupted by a richer, riper and less fragrant aroma as Tock, the dim-witted lad who carries out the more straightforward of the outdoor tasks, carted another load of dung out to the vegetable patch. Dipping my quill into the ink horn yet again, I paused briefly: Tock needed someone brighter to order his days, and Samuel, most reliable of men and equipped with an inexhaustible fund of patience when it comes to Tock, had gone to market. Tock is willing and he has strong arms and broad shoulders, but he is totally lacking in initiative. Order him to take a load of dung from the midden to the vegetable garden and he’ll do just that: take one load. Then, unless somebody notices, he’ll sit beside the empty cart gazing into space for the remainder of the daylight. I put down my quill, about to go outside and gently but firmly encourage Tock to go back for another load, but Sallie beat me to it. As I returned to my books, I heard her shrill voice screeching at him to get back to work as that dung wasn’t going to grow legs and walk to the vegetable patch by itself.

  I have no idea what Tock’s real name is, and very possibly he hasn’t either. He must have been orphaned young, and he first came to my family’s notice when he began hanging around my grandfather’s forge, blue-tipped hands spread to the warmth, refusing to go away even when various objects were hurled at him along with the imprecations. He’d have been seven or eight then, filthy, lice-ridden, starving, clad in rags and with his bones standing out so that you could have traced his entire skeleton under the blotched and scabby skin. My grandmother took pity on the boy, and persuaded my grandfather to put him to work in the smithy. Tock would sit for hours, tapping a hammer against the huge old anvil and murmuring ‘Tock’. It was the only word he spoke – and tapping his hammer purposelessly on the anvil the only activity he did – for almost two years. But my grandparents refused to give up, and Tock has been with one or other member of the family ever since.

  I heard Sallie come bustling back into the house and cross the hall below me, muttering not quite under her breath about being far too busy to worry about stupid clot-heads who hadn’t the wits to carry a task to its fulfilment, and how was she expected to get the spring cleaning done when she was interrupted every few minutes and nobody had done anything about her perfectly reasonable request for a new goose-wing duster, and where she was going to find the time to gather the tansy for the springtime vermifuge she didn’t know …

  I shut Sallie firmly out of my mind and went back to the seemingly endless list of reasons why a woman fails to conceive.

  My peace was abruptly ruptured by a shriek from below. The hall of my house is wide and high-ceilinged, and has a fine echo. Sallie’s scream was still resonating as I leapt up and ran from my study – which is on the upper floor – to see what had happened.

  She was standing in the entry porch, leaning against one wall, her hands up to her pale face, fingers pressed against her mouth as if to prevent vomit flying out. Indeed, the stench was such that the precaution seemed sensible. I caught a brief glimpse of blood, gristle, severed vessels …

  A big black shape came pounding up and I was almost knocked off my feet. With a curse, I caught hold of my dog by the scruff of his neck and shut him in the front parlour. Then, hurrying back to Sallie, I patted her shoulder, muttering some vague reassurance. ‘I’ll see to it,’ I added, ‘you go and sit in the kitchen and have a restorative drink with a big spoonful of honey.’ She didn’t move.

  With an inward sigh, I stepped out on to the front step to have a closer look. Wide eyes following my every movement, Sallie removed her hand and muttered, ‘It’s too much, really it is! The other things I could deal with, but this! It is too much!’

  I crouched down. Sallie stood close behind me. I could feel her hot, agitated breathing on my neck.

  On my doorstep lay a mess of semi-putrefied flesh. Uterus, cervix, vagina and vulva, neatly and precisely cut from the body. Embryos in their enclosing membranes could be seen through a deep cut in the flesh. The raw, bloodied edges had attracted flies; soon their eggs would be hatching.

  I poked at it briefly, then, pushing Sallie before me, retreated to the back of the house to fetch a spade on which to pick up the stinking thing and take it away for decent burial, and a mop and bucket to wash the step.

  ‘They’ve gone too far this time,’ Sallie said. She had been repeating variations on this theme since I had escorted her into her kitchen and sat her down with a small glass of brandy. (Alcohol, she had told me firmly, was better for shock than the honey in hot water which had been my suggested remedy.) ‘Faeces, dead mice, the square of linen soaked in blood, the rotting calf’s foot alive with maggots, even that headless rat, I could deal with. I’m not saying I liked the clearing up’ – as if anyone would, I thought – ‘but I managed it with not a word of complaint.’ In fact there had been quite a lot of words of complaint, especially about the rat and the pile of dog shit, but I didn’t think now was the moment to point that out. ‘But this, this is something different altogether. That thing,’ – she pointed a trembling finger in the direction of the front step – ‘that’s nothing short of criminal!’ Her voice throbbed dramatically with outrage. ‘Now they, whoever they are, have stooped to violating human bodies and, for all we know, possibly they killed the victim too, and it is too much.’ She glared up at me. ‘It must stop, Doctor, or else – or else—’ I would have sworn she was about to say, or else I leave, but, happily for both of us, she must have thought better of it.

  I knelt down before her on the cool flags of the floor and took hold of her hand. To my surprise – perhaps it was the shock – she didn’t pull away. ‘Sallie, those were not the reproductive organs of a woman,’ I said gently.

  Her eyes flew to mine. ‘Not … But I saw the cunny and the womb!’ Only her distress allowed the blunt words to escape her habitually prudish lips. ‘I saw them!’

  ‘Yes, you did,’ I agreed, still in the same soft voice. ‘But they came from a pig. A sow, to be exact, and one which had been about four weeks pregnant.’ I squeezed Sallie’s hand. ‘I expect you saw the little embryos?’ She nodded. ‘Well, for one thing, no woman ever produces that many, and, for another, they were housed in a differently shaped womb from that of a human. In a sow, the uterus is formed from two structures that resemble horns, which act both as a conduit for the boar’s sperm and also house the growing foetuses. The—’

  Sallie extracted her hand and waved it feebly. ‘Yes, thank you, Doctor, I understand.’

  Embarrassed, I stopped. Bodies, both animal and human, have fascinated me since I was a child, and I frequently forget that others are not at ease discussing the more intimate aspects as freely and casually as I do.

  I pulled up a chair and sat down beside he
r. ‘I expect somebody was slaughtering their sow and, seeing the’ – Sallie gave me a sharp look as if daring me to repeat the coarse words she herself had used – ‘seeing the insides,’ I said instead, ‘decided to extract them and play a trick. Or perhaps whoever had killed the pig had thrown the detritus away, and our joker came across the – er, the organs and decided he had a use for them. Not a very pleasant thing to do,’ I added as Sallie, face full of indignation, opened her mouth to protest – ‘but harmless.’

  ‘It wasn’t harmless for the pig,’ Sallie pointed out with ruthless logic.

  ‘No, indeed not,’ I agreed. ‘But she’d have been dead anyway, Sallie. Dead, and her flesh now on the way to someone’s smokehouse.’

  Sallie gave a sniff and reached for her brandy, rather ostentatiously draining the little glass. Observing her, I decided she was recovering well enough and deemed it prudent not to offer more. Her complexion had resumed its normal ruddy glow and she was no longer shaking. Soon, I would creep away and return to my study, leaving her to get back to work.

  Fortunately, the shock appeared to have made her overlook the obvious: pigs were slaughtered in the autumn, after they had been fattened up on the last of what nature provided and let loose, where possible, to forage in the woods and the forests on the acorns and the beech mast. April was no time to slaughter any pig, especially a pregnant sow.

  Whoever had deposited those gruesome, pathetic remains at my door was no country joker, coming by chance across unwanted bits of carcass and deciding to provoke me with the bloody gore. The latest and most horrific of the offerings that had been left, it was possible that the pig uterus represented nothing more than an escalation of the unpleasantness.

  Back in the peace of my study, I tried to convince myself of this. But Sallie’s words kept echoing in my mind: this is something different altogether.

  I had a nasty feeling she was right.

  My name is Gabriel Taverner. I was born and raised in Devon, in a beautiful old house situated to the north of Plymouth on the banks of the Tavy River. My paternal grandmother Graice Oldreive had a copy of the Geneva Bible: a book which she treated with such awed reverence that it might as well have been made of solid gold. If the family tree she carefully inscribed inside its front cover is to be believed, all the many bloodlines which united over the centuries to make me had their roots in the good, rich, red Devon soil.