Kate Sedley - The Burgundian's tale

‘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.’