Weird Detectives (29 page)

“Ill-nurtured cozeners, the both of them! Their loyalty is suspect, their motives impure. No. If I cannot have Dr. Dee I will have his apprentice.”

For a moment Pilbeam considered a sudden change in profession. His beard was still brown, his step firm—he could apprentice himself to a cobbler or a baker and make an honest living without dabbling in the affairs of noblemen, who were more capricious than any spirit. He made one more attempt to save himself. “I am honored, my lord. But I doubt that it is within my powers to raise your . . . er, speak with your wife’s shade.”

“Then consult Dr. Dee’s books, you malmsey-nosed knave, and follow their instructions.”

“But, but . . . there is the possibility, my lord, that her death was neither chance nor villainy but caused by disease . . . ”

“Nonsense. I was her husband. If she had been ill, I’d have known.”

Not when you were not there to be informed
, Pilbeam answered silently. Aloud he said, “Perhaps, then, she was ill in her senses, driven to, to . . . ”

“ . . . to self-murder? Think, varlet! A fall down the stairs could no more be relied upon by a suicide than by a murderer. She was found at the foot of the staircase, her neck broken but her headdress still secure upon her head. That is hardly a scene of violence.”

Pilbeam found it furtively comforting that Lord Robert wanted to protect his wife’s reputation from hints of suicide . . . Well, her reputation was his as well. The sacrifice of a humble practitioner of the magical sciences, now—that would matter nothing to him. Pilbeam imagined his lordship’s face amongst those watching the mounting flames, a face contemptuous of his failure.

“Have no fear, Dr. Pilbeam, I shall reward you well for services rendered.” Lord Robert spun about and walked away. “Amy was buried at St. Mary’s, Oxford. Give her my respects.”

Pilbeam opened his mouth, shut it, swallowed, and managed a weak, “Yes, my lord,” which bounced unheeded from Robert’s departing back.

The spire of St. Mary’s, Oxford, rose into the nighttime murk like a admonitory finger pointing to heaven. Pilbeam had no quarrel with that admonition. He hoped its author would find no quarrel with his present endeavor.

He withdrew into the dark, fetid alley and willed his stomach to stop grumbling. He’d followed Dr. Dee’s instructions explicitly, preparing himself with abstinence, continence, and prayer made all the more fervid for the peril in which he found himself. And surely the journey on the muddy November roads had sufficiently mortified his flesh. He was ready to summon spirits, be they demons or angels.

The black lump beside him was no demon. Martin Molesworth, his apprentice, held the lantern and the bag of implements. Pilbeam heard no stomach rumblings from the lad, but he could enforce Dr. Dee’s directions only so far as his own admonitory fist could reach. “Come along,” he whispered. “Step lively.”

Man and boy scurried across the street and gained the porch of the church. The door squealed open and thudded shut behind them. “Light,” ordered Pilbeam.

Martin slid aside the shutter concealing the candle and lifted the lantern. Its hot-metal tang dispelled the usual odors of a sanctified site—incense, mildew, and decaying mortality. Pilbeam pushed Martin toward the chancel. Their steps echoed, drawing uneasy shiftings and mutterings from amongst the roof beams. Bats or swallows, Pilbeam hoped.

Amy Robsart had been buried with such pomp, circumstance, and controversy that only a few well-placed questions had established her exact resting place. Now Pilbeam contemplated the flagstones laid close together behind the altar of the church and extended his hand for his bag.

Martin was gazing upward, to where the columns met overhead in a thicket of stone tracery, his mouth hanging open. “You mewling knotty-pated scullion!” Pilbeam hissed, and snatched the bag from his limp hands. “Pay attention!

“Yes, Master.” Martin held the lantern whilst Pilbeam arranged the charms, the herbs, and the candles he dare not light. With a bit of charcoal he drew a circle with four divisions and four crosses. Then, his tongue clamped securely between his teeth, he opened the book he’d dared bring from Dr. Dee’s collection, and began to sketch the incantatory words and signs.

If he interpreted Dee’s writings correctly—the man set no examples in penmanship—Pilbeam did not need to raise Amy’s physical remains. A full necromantic apparition was summoned for consultation about the future, when what he wished was to consult about the past. Surely this would not be as difficult a task. “
Laudetur Deus Trinus et unus
,” he muttered, “
nunc et in sempiterna seculorum secula . . .
”

Martin shifted and a drop of hot wax fell onto Pilbeam’s wrist. “Beslubbering gudgeon!”

“Sorry, Master.”

Squinting in the dim light, Pilbeam wiped away one of his drawings with the hem of his robe and tried again.
There
. For a moment he gazed appreciatively at his handiwork, then took a deep breath. His stomach gurgled.

Pilbeam dragged the lad into the center of the circle and jerked his arm upwards, so the lantern would illuminate the page of his book. He raised his magical rod and began to speak the words of the ritual. “I conjure thee by the authority of God Almighty, by the virtue of heaven and the stars, by the virtue of the angels, by that of the elements.
Domine, Deus meus, in te speravi. Damahil, Pancia, Mitraton . . . ”

He was surprised and gratified to see a sparkling mist began to stream upwards from between the flat stones just outside the circle. Encouraged, he spoke the words even faster.

“ . . . to receive such virtue herein that we may obtain by thee the perfect issue of all our desires, without evil, without deception, by God, the creator of the sun and the angels.
Lamineck. Caldulech. Abracadabra
.”

The mist wavered. A woman’s voice sighed, desolate.

“Amy Robsart, Lady Robert Dudley, I conjure thee.”

Martin’s eyes bulged and the lantern swung in his hand, making the shadows of column and choir stall surge sickeningly back and forth. “Master . . . ”

“Shut your mouth, hedge-pig!” Pilbeam ordered. “Amy Robsart, I conjure thee. I beseech thee for God his sake,
et per viscera misericordiae Altissimi,
that thou wouldst declare unto us
misericordiae Dei sint super nos
.”

“Amen,” said Martin helpfully. His voice leaped upward an octave.

The mist swirled and solidified into the figure of a woman. Even in the dim light of the lantern Pilbeam could see every detail of the revenant’s dress, the puffed sleeves, the stiffened stomacher, the embroidered slippers. The angled wings of her headdress framed a thin, pale face, its dark eyes too big, its mouth too small, as though Amy Robsart had spent her short life observing many things but fearing to speak of them. A fragile voice issued from those ashen lips. “Ah, woe. Woe.”

Pilbeam’s heart was pounding. Every nerve strained toward the doors of the church and through the walls to the street outside. “Tell me what happened during your last hours on earth, Lady Robert.”

“My last hours?” She dissolved and solidified again, wringing her frail hands. “I fell. I was walking down the stairs and I fell.”

“Why did you fall, my lady?”

“I was weak. I must have stumbled.”

“Did someone push you?” Martin asked, and received the end of Pilbeam’s rod in his ribs.

Amy’s voice wavered like a set of ill-tempered bagpipes. “I walked doubled over in pain. The stairs are narrow. I fell.”

“Pain? You were ill?”

“A spear through my heart and my head so heavy I could barely hold it erect . . . ”

A light flashed in the window, accompanied by a clash of weaponry. The night watch. Had someone seen the glow from the solitary lantern? Perhaps the watchmen were simply making their rounds and contemplating the virtues of bread and ale. Perhaps they were searching for miscreants.

With one convulsive jerk of his scrawny limbs, Martin scooped the herbs, the charms, the candles, even the mite of charcoal back into the bag. He seized the book and cast it after the other items. Pilbeam had never seen him move with such speed and economy of action. “Stop,” he whispered urgently, “Give me the book, I have to . . . ”

Martin was already wiping away the charcoaled marks. Pilbeam brought his rod down on the lad’s arm, but it was too late. The circle was broken. A sickly-sweet breath of putrefaction made the candle gutter. The woman-shape, the ghost, the revenant, ripped itself into pennons of color and shadow. With an anguished moan those tatters of humanity streamed across the chancel and disappeared down the nave of the church.

Pulling on the convenient handle of Martin’s ear, Pilbeam dragged the lad across the chancel. His hoarse whisper repeated a profane: “Earth-vexing dewberry, spongy rump-fed skainsmate, misbegotten tickle-brained whey-faced whoreson, you prevented me from laying the ghost back in its grave!”

“Sorry, Master, ow, ow . . . ”

The necromancer and his apprentice fled through the door of the sacristy and into the black alleys of Oxford.

Cumnor Place belonged not to Lord Robert Dudley but to one of his cronies. If Pilbeam ever wished to render his own wife out of sight and therefore out of mind, an isolated country house such as Cumnor, with its air of respectable disintegration, would serve very well. Save that his own wife’s wrath ran a close second to Lord Robert’s.

What a shame that Amy Robsart’s meek spirit had proved to be of only middling assistance to Lord Robert’s—and therefore Pilbeam’s—quest. No, no hired bravo had broken Amy’s neck and arranged her body at the foot of the stairs. Nor had she hurled herself down those same stairs in a paroxysm of despair. Her death might indeed have been an accident.

But how could he prove such a subtle accident? And worse, how could he report such ambiguous findings to Lord Robert? Of only one thing was Pilbeam certain: he was not going to inform his lordship that his wife’s ghost had been freed from its corporeal wrappings and carelessly not put back again.

Shooting a malevolent glare at Martin, Pilbeam led the way into the courtyard of the house. Rain streaked the stones and timber of the façade. Windows turned a blind eye to the chill gray afternoon. The odors of smoke and offal hung in the air.

A door opened, revealing a plump, pigeon-like woman wearing the simple garb of a servant. She greeted the visitors with, “What do you want?”

“Good afternoon, Mistress. I am Dr. Erasmus Pilbeam, acting for Lord Robert Dudley.” He offered her a bow that was polite but not deferential.

The woman’s suspicion eased into resignation. “Then come through, and warm yourselves by the fire. I am Mrs. Odingsells, the housekeeper.”

“Thank you.”

Within moments Pilbeam found himself seated in the kitchen, slurping hot cabbage soup and strong ale. Martin crouched in the rushes at his feet, gnawing on a crust of bread. On the opposite side of the fireplace a young woman mended a lady’s shift, her narrow face shadowed by her cap.

Mrs. Odingsells answered Pilbeam’s question. “Yes, Lady Robert was in perfect health, if pale and worn, up until several days before she died. Then she turned sickly and peevish. Why, even Lettice there, her maid, could do nothing for her. Or with her, come to that.”

Pilbeam looked over at the young woman and met a glance sharp as the needle she wielded.

The housekeeper went on, “The day she died her ladyship sent the servants away to Abingdon Fair. I refused to go. It was a Sunday, no day for a gentlewoman to be out and about, sunshine or no.”

“She sent everyone away?” Pilbeam repeated. “If she were ill, surely she would have needed an attendant.”

“Ill? Ill-used, I should say . . . ” Remembering discretion, Mrs. Odingsells contented herself with, “If she sent the servants away, it was because she tired of their constantly offering food she would not eat and employments she had no wish to pursue. Why, I myself heard her praying to God to deliver her from desperation, not long before I heard her fall.”

“She was desperate from illness? Or because her husband’s . . . duties were elsewhere?”

“Desperate from her childlessness, perhaps, which would follow naturally upon Lord Robert’s absence.”

So then, Amy’s spear through the heart was a symbolic one, the pain of a woman spurned. “Her ladyship was of a strange mind the day she died, it seems. Do you think she died by chance? Or by villainy, her own or someone else’s?”

Again Pilbeam caught the icy stab of Lettice’s eyes.

“She was a virtuous God-fearing gentlewoman, and alone when she fell,” Mrs. Odingsells returned indignantly, as though that were answer enough.

It was not enough, however. If not for the testimony of Amy herself, Pilbeam would be thinking once again of self-murder. But then, his lordship himself had said,
a fall down the stairs could no more be relied upon by a suicide than by a murderer.

The housekeeper bent over the pot of fragrant soup. Pilbeam asked, “Could I see the exact staircase? Perhaps Lettice can show me, as your attention is upon your work.”

“Lettice,” Mrs. Odingsells said, with a jerk of her head. “See to it.”

Silently the maid put down her mending and started toward the door. Pilbeam swallowed the last of his soup and followed her. He did not realize Martin was following him until he stopped beside the fatal staircase and the lad walked into his rump. Pilbeam brushed him aside. “She was found here?”

“Yes, master, so she was.” Now Lettice’s eyes were roaming up and down and sideways, avoiding his. “See how narrow the stair is, winding and worn at the turn. In the darkness . . . ”

“Darkness? Did she not die on a fair September afternoon?”

“Yes, yes, but the house is in shadow. And her ladyship was of a strange mind that day, you said yourself, Master.”

Behind Pilbeam, Martin muttered beneath his breath, “The lady was possessed, if you ask me.”

“No one is asking you, clotpole,” Pilbeam told him.

Lettice spun around. “Possessed? Why would you say such a thing? How . . . What is that?”

“What?” Pilbeam followed the direction of her eyes. The direction of her entire body, which strained upward stiff as a hound at point.