Scholar's Plot (14 page)

Her lips were twitching too. “’Tis not funny. Poor Rupert sputtered out something about not thinking that would work. Meg and I said no, as loudly and firmly as we could without having screaming tantrums. Which we would have, only that would have convinced everyone we were silly hysterical girls, who’d settle down and go along with it eventually.”

She was right, it really wasn’t funny.

“What did your father say? You’re seventeen, so it’s his opinion that matters.”

“Except it doesn’t,” said Kathy bitterly. “Another of the High Liege’s oh so clever notions was to have the barons give him wardship over all the breeding stock, at least in terms of marriage, before they ever went to court. Thinking that the instant poor Rupert showed interest in any of us, he’d marry us off on the spot.”

I frowned. “What about marriage contracts? For noble houses that’s a big deal.”

Jack and I had once run a scam based on a forged marriage contract, three generations old. And had been paid to burn the thing so promptly, I still wondered what was lurking in that family tree. The current baron was a nasty piece of work, and if his ancestors were like him…

“The marriage contract ‘to be negotiated later, in good faith,’” Kathy told me. “Even Father admitted that when this High Liege said that, it would be in good faith. 
The Liege would be so relieved, he’d probably even be generous. Half those girls brought wedding gowns to court with them, just in case.”

“And in trying to sneak off the hunting field, you suddenly found yourself leading the chase.” I had no desire to laugh now. She could really be in trouble.

“Benton’s letter couldn’t have come at a better time,” she said. “‘My family needs me! I must go!’ And I packed and fled before the Liege even had time to hear about it.”

“And of course, you didn’t happen to mention which family member it was.”

“No point in being stupid about it. I also didn’t admit that the only thing Benton had asked me was how to get in touch with Michael. Interesting, that when there’s real trouble the person he goes to for help isn’t Father, or even Rupert — our Rupert — but the family scandal.”

“Sometimes you can be more effective outside the law,” I agreed. “And he knew Michael wouldn’t judge him.”

Michael saved his moral judgments for me. But I was about to prove myself better at knight errantry, by clearing Benton’s name. I refused to worry about what happened after, because the first print shop was before us.

I couldn’t tell the clerk at Demkin’s Press and Ink that I had a job for them, or I might end up paying for a bundle of pamphlets. I pulled out the two lecture passes, and asked about them.

“We printed these,” he pointed to Master Hotchkiss’ pass. “We print most of the lecture passes, unless we’re too busy to handle it, and then they go to our competitor — so we try not to be too busy. This other one … I don’t recognize that type offhand, and the paper doesn’t look like any we’ve had in for a while. That yellowish tinge, that’s due to different kinds of wood going into the pulp. Would you like to ask Master Hornby about it? You’d have to come into the back — he’s keeping an eye on some new apprentices on the press.”

Going into the back was no hardship for me. My father had considered the work of a common printer beneath a scholar. But at one point, when Mother had turned all the girl’s dresses twice, he’d worked in a print shop for a whole summer and into the fall. I’d been five at the time, just old enough to take his luncheon to the shop when he left it behind. I still remembered my first sight of the place, being fascinated by the moving parts on the press, and reaching out to touch one of the wet rollers. My black, sticky palms had made wonderful prints all over my shirt and britches, till someone saw me and sent for my father.

My mother had made a sufficient impression on me that I hadn’t played with the rollers again. But I’d loved that shop so much I used to distract Father with questions as he left in the morning, trying to trick him into forgetting his basket so I could take it to him.

The big sheets, eight pages on either side of them, hung on the drying lines like rustling paper laundry. The press used a lever, not the old-fashioned screw, and it folded up like a sitting frog. The ink made a sticky, tearing sound as the roller went over the type. I swear my palms felt that old familiar itch to play in it.

Katherine stared all around us, and behind the flashing spectacles her eyes were bright with the same fascination I’d felt when I was five.

Master Hornby, a middle-aged man in an ink-stained apron, proved his right to the title “master printer” by noticing the curly letters in his first glance at Benton’s pass. “No, we don’t have anything with those long 
descenders. I can’t say as to the paper. We’ve used some like it, from time to time. But this doesn’t look like a font from any of our cutters — and besides, I’d remember doing a second batch of those passes. We printed eight hundred in the first run, just like they usually order for a big lecture. I’m surprised the university needed more. And that they didn’t come to us for them.”

“We weren’t thinking you’d printed a second batch,” Kathy said. “But that someone might have asked for a single pass, this one, to be printed.”

Master Hornby’s brows rose. “I’d certainly remember that. It would have cost ’em high for just one — most of the cost of a small job lies in setting the type. It’s only when you get into big jobs that the price of paper and ink starts to matter more. And why would anyone want to print one pass? All you have to do is ask for one at the clerk’s office.”

“’Tis a point,” Kathy said, as we made our way out of the shop and turned toward Marleybone Printing. “Even if the killer works outside the university, why not just go ask for one?”

“Because I’ll bet clerk Peebles has a very good idea who she gave those passes to — she’s an efficient sort of woman. If he planned to use it as part of a murder, the killer might not want some professor or scholar remembering that he’d asked them for a pass. Which either means that he isn’t a professor or a scholar, who could get one without being noticed, or that all the passes had already been given out when he made his plan. But whatever the reason, we know someone had it printed because of the different paper and type.”

“He’d be afraid someone would remember him asking for a pass, but not think that a printer would remember being paid to print one?” Kathy asked.

“Well, he … um. That’s a point. He’s either the kind of noble who thinks people like printers are part of the furniture—”

“Not likely for a professor, who teaches merit scholars,” Kathy put in.

“Or he’s stupid,” I finished. “Also not likely for a professor. And most of the people in that blackmail file have been paying Master Hotchkiss too long to be scholars.”

“Young doesn’t mean stupid,” Kathy said. “Although thinking of some of the girls at court… No, we can’t rule out stupidity.”

“You never can,” I said. “But Jack used to say that you can’t rely on it either. And this … it doesn’t feel stupid. He made a few mistakes about what a burglar would do, but that’s just lack of knowledge.”

“He or she,” Kathy said. “And ’tis knowledge most blackmail victims wouldn’t have. I wouldn’t. Though it still might not have been someone Hotchkiss was blackmailing.”

“Who else has motive? Besides your brother, of course.”

She was thinking so hard she brushed my provocation aside. “What are the usual motives for murder? Greed, hatred, love, revenge.”

“A blackmail victim could be operating on three of the four.” I pointed out.

“What about love?”

“There’s no sign that our librarian had a lady friend. Or a gentleman friend, either.”

“There are other kinds of love,” Kathy said mildly. “Parent and child. Or even friends, who can be closer than brothers.”

“Or real brothers,” I cut in, not liking the turn this had taken. “I love my sisters, crazy as they make me. But generally it’s the romantic, man-woman love that people kill over.”

She eyed me askance for a moment, but gave in. “From which I’m running like mad, though I haven’t managed to escape it. Have you ever been in love?”

“Once,” I said. “Lucy was a butcher’s daughter, but even her dowry and an apprenticeship in her father’s business wasn’t enough to frighten me away.”

“What was she like?” Kathy pushed up her spectacles, and waited while a woman herded a flock of geese across our path. “Aside from a butcher’s shop for a dowry?”

“Glossy black curls, glowing dark eyes, and a figure that made the eyes and hair irrelevant,” I said. “At the time I thought she was remarkably sweet and special and honest and pure and true and … well, all the things you think, when it’s a fantasy you’re in love with instead of a person.”

“So what burst the fantasy? Did it just wear off? Or did you actually work a week in the butcher’s shop?”

“Neither — though the first would have happened eventually, and a week in the shop would certainly have done it. No, Jack bribed her to dump me.”

At this point I felt quite cheerful about it, though at the time…

“Heartbreak doesn’t ache,” I said. “Not like a broken bone does. It’s more a burning pain. But since heartburn is actually indigestion, no one says that.”

“So she broke your heart?” Kathy managed to look both sympathetic and skeptical. “Or was it Jack who did that?”

“Oh, they both did. Though Jack’s ‘betrayal’ actually hurt more. The moment I saw that garnet necklace she was flaunting I began to suspect. She did her best to let me down gently, but she was a lousy liar. It became clearer and clearer, until she finally broke down and said that the money Jack had paid would buy her jewels, and red leather shoes, and a lace wedding dress when her pa finally chose someone.”

“I’m sorry,” Kathy said softly.

“Don’t be. I shortly realized that Jack was right; he’d saved me from a horrible fate. And I’m not talking about the butcher shop, though that would have been horrible too.”

“But if she was pressured…”

“Not pressured,” I said. “Bribed. And though it took me a while to realize it, when I finally figured out that she was more interested in garnet necklaces than she was in me … I stopped loving her.”

“Hmm. That’s not very romantic,” Kathy said. “But I have to say, ’tis practical.”

“So was your plan to avoid marrying the Heir,” I said. “And look where that got you.”

We reached the far side of town more swiftly than I thought we would, or at least, it felt swift. Kathy and I had been corresponding for so many years, I’d come to know her better than I’d realized. Talking with her was much like writing, except that she could respond instantly, and I could watch expressions chase one another across her mobile face.

Now that Kathy had pointed out how stupid it would be for the killer to draw attention to himself by having a single pass printed, I wasn’t surprised to learn that Marleybone Printing hadn’t produced any passes for that lecture. They had no font with long curly descenders, either.

It took some time to 
locate a suitable chicken. But if Fisk was wrong, and ’twas poison, I didn’t want to kill some innocent animal. The animal’s owners would have objected too.

First I had to introduce Benton to the jeweler, though the man had seen enough of my brother out his windows that he only nodded, and asked for a hammer and nails to tack a series of old-fashioned crimped ruffs around the attic windows.

Benton asked the landlady for tools, and paid her still more of Kathy’s money to rent another attic room “to my kinsman’s friends.” We then delivered the tools, and the jeweler took them up with such interest that we felt no real need to stay and watch him work. Besides, I wanted to investigate the tea grounds I’d taken from Hotchkiss’ compost … was it only last night? It felt like days had passed, but ’twas only night before last that the librarian had been struck down from 
behind, which is hard to do when a man coming down his own stairs surprises you in his home. Granted, as far as we knew the librarian’s murder wasn’t linked to the project, which was my investigation. But we knew so little yet, that hardly seemed relevant, and there was something about those tiny damp flecks that just felt … wrong.

Benton was as bored as I watching the jeweler exclaim over awls and pliers so he offered to assist with the investigation — but it turned out he had no idea who might have a chicken to spare. I asked at the tavern where we’d purchased breakfast, but they got their meat from a butcher. The butcher told us he bought his livestock on market day, which was four days hence.

In the end, we checked on the jeweler once more — he was building what looked like a tiny ladder — then I saddled the horses. Benton rode Tipple, and with True frisking at our heels — or sometimes under our patient horses’ hooves — we rode out to the countryside and found a farm with a large chicken coop. For a tin quart, I talked them into parting with an elderly rooster who was soon for the pot — though if his meat was as tough as he was, they were fortunate to miss the meal.

They threw in the use of some dishware and hot water, and while Benton boiled up the tea grounds I’d taken from Master Hotchkiss’ compost pail, I chased the rooster around the pen. True did his best to help, and when told his assistance wasn’t required he sat and panted while Benton held his collar. I finally cornered the rooster, at the cost of a few pecks, and shoved him into the crate the farmwife offered me.

If he was as thirsty as the chase had made me, we should know soon enough. By this time ’twas midafternoon, and the sun beat down.

Benton poured the tea into a shallow pan to cool, and the rooster regarded us malevolently. His feathers were a deep red-brown, his stride arrogant as a lord’s.

“So now what?” My brother’s gaze was full of amusement. “You don’t really think this mess is drugged, do you? Hotchkiss died of a blow to the head.”

The brew looked like weak spice tea, and the sweet sickly scent of it still made a warning prickle down my nerves. Our mother’s herb talking Gift has been known to crop up in all her offspring, from time to time.

“Remember when you told Rupert not to set his snare in that patch of brush by the spring, and he ignored you?”

“Oh. Well, I did warn him.” Benton didn’t look too distressed at the memory. Rupert had been inclined to claim an older brother’s authority that neither Benton nor I had been willing to grant him. And it wasn’t as if Mother’s salves hadn’t soothed the truly horrendous rash. But she’d had to use magica, and she’d been furious with him. As Benton said, he’d been warned.

We seated ourselves in the shade of the barn, with a clear view of the crate and the dog between us.

“Tell me more about the project while we wait,” I said. “It might have been your Gift that made you uneasy, but you might also have seen or heard something without realizing it.”

“I already told you,” Benton said. “All I did was supply some ancient lore. I spent most of my time there helping Lat Quicken with the rabbits.”

“Who’s Lat Quicken? No, wait. I want the whole story, in order.”

’Twas not as if we had anything else to do, but Benton eyed me askance.

“How did you first hear about it?” I prompted.

“Everyone learned about it at the same time. All the professors, I mean. Headman Portner called a meeting, and told us the Heir was offering a huge sum to any university who could figure out a way — a safe way — to give his lady friend Gifts. Or at least, let her bear Gifted children. I thought he was crazy,” my brother went on, apparently oblivious to the fact that most of our relatives considered his obsession with the past a bit mad too. At least, until my misconduct cast his into the shade.

“Even if it wasn’t madness, I still think a savant would be a better source for something like that than a university,” Benton continued. “Only that wouldn’t work, for obvious reasons.”

Savants are half-feral hermits, who intercede between men and the gods they’ve offended when magica is harvested without the proper sacrifice. I’ve had dealings with several in my wanderings, and found them … well, a mixed lot. But they take nothing from those they’ve helped, except the goods and food they need to survive in the wilds. The Heir’s reward would mean nothing to them. And they might have refused the task, anyway. Most believe that the savants’ purpose is to keep the balance between man and nature. The Heir’s request might be perceived as something that would upset that balance.

Or it might not. The savants never say what their purpose is.

“So Portner instructed his professors to come up with a way to earn the reward?”

Benton cast me the glance reserved for someone who really should know better.

“He told us that if we wished to launch such a project, the university and the Heir would fund it between them, and that a reasonable share of the reward would accrue to whoever succeeded. The prospect of having someone fund your experiments, without you having to beg for it, is enough to make anyone take notice. If he’d been offering to support research into the past, I’d have leapt at it. But no one ever does,” he added. “Except sometimes some baron, who wants the true story of his ancestor’s heroic deed. And when you find out that what really happened wasn’t all that heroic, they—”

“Who leapt at this project?” I asked. “Professor Dayless, who studies the mind — I suppose that makes sense. Who else?”

“Professor Stint,” Benton said. “He’s a chemist, and an apothecary, so that made sense too. The thing is, they’ve got completely different theories about how Gifts work. Stint says that all your reactions to drugs — pain killers, sleeping draughts, hallucinogens, even alcohol — it’s all the chemistry of the drug interacting with the chemistry of the body.”

“Chemistry in our bodies?”

But the mention of drugs reminded me, and I checked the pan. The tea had cooled, so I poured it into a saucer and pushed it into the crate.

The rooster ignored it.

“This may take a while,” Benton said.

True evidently thought so too. He lay down and closed his eyes.

“Chemistry of the body,” I reminded him.

“On the other hand, Professor Dayless believes that Gifts exist in everyone’s mind, but in some people they’re locked behind some sort of mental door. And that if you could find a way to open that door, everyone would have Gifts.”

I considered this. “It sounds more likely than that we’ve got an alchemical laboratory inside us. Has this Stint never gutted game?”

“Don’t let Stint hear you talk about alchemy,” Benton said. “‘The difference between wishful superstition and science’ is a ten minute lecture. And how do the kidneys or liver strip poison and waste from our blood, if not through chemistry? Anyway, as soon as Portner asked us to submit theories they both popped up and started arguing for their own theory about how Gifts work, right there in the meeting. Portner hauled them off for a private conference, and the rest of us departed thinking we were well out of it. Only I wasn’t,” he finished glumly.

“But if they succeeded, think of all the old trash you could dig up with your share of the Heir’s money.”

The rooster paced back and forth in the crate, still ignoring the tea. ’Twas three feet long and two wide, so he had room to go on doing this for some time.

“In fact, what do the ancients have to do with the mind or chemistry? Or how Gifts work, either?”

“Just because their tools were primitive, that doesn’t mean they were stupid,” Benton said. “It takes more skill, more knowledge and cleverness, to survive with primitive tools than with advanced ones! Just as the poor must use more wit and courage than the rich.” He was so heated that True roused to lick his face, and he gave the dog an absent pat.

’Twas an old argument, and one that hadn’t endeared Benton’s studies to our parents. Though having lived by my wits for several years now, I was inclined to agree with him.

“Did your ancients know how to Gift the Giftless? I have a hard time believing that bit of knowledge would ever be lost.”

“I doubt they did,” said Benton. “Though I think they tried. There are no written records, of course.”

’Twas the creation of writing that separates the primitive ancients from those ancestors who simply lived longer ago than the rest of us.

“But bits of their world still survive. Rock carvings, in incredible detail — some of which show herbs clearly enough you can make out the species. Then there are the people who still worship the gods. How ancient are the roots of that old religion?”

“I have no idea.” Once philosophers had determined that the gods cared only for those plants and animals they Gift with magic, most folk had given up worshiping them. And that was almost at the dawn of written language. “How old is it?”

“I don’t know,” said Benton cheerfully. “No one does. But that’s the point. It really could have started back in ancient times. And you know that old granny rhyme, ‘Vervain, dittany, tansy, rue—’’’

“‘The fates will bring a gift to you,’” I finished. “Then the old beldame cuts the cards, or reads the leaves in your teacup, and… Wait, you think ’tis not ‘gift’ but Gift? That’s ridiculous.”

“Why? I’ve found older versions of that rhyme — a lot older. ’Twas once, ‘The gods will bring a gift to you.’ So why not Gift?”

“All right. So you supplied ancient herbal formulas to Professor Stint, and he made the potions?”

“Nothing so tidy. I gave him whatever bits of lore I could scavenge, from pictures on pots to talking to folk who deliberately destroy magica, and let the gods punish them in order to talk with them, or be more worthy, or some other mad thing.”

I decided not to mention the time when I’d wanted to contact a savant, and endured ant bites, hornet stings, and a skunking to do so. The thought that I should warn Fisk not to tell him crossed my mind, and then I remembered I couldn’t tell Fisk to do anything. He was no longer my squire, or even really my associate, though we’d taken to introducing each other that way.

And what was I doing, out in the countryside watching a rooster pass and ignore his water dish, as I helped investigate
Fisk’s
theory of the crime?

But I knew the answer; a man had been murdered, and whether ’twas a Gift or instinct speaking — ’tis often hard to tell the difference — I knew there was something wrong with this tea. To refuse to follow that clue, wherever it led, was not the act of a knight errant … or even a good man. I couldn’t betray my nature, even to score a point in this odd contest with Fisk, and I…

Wait. When I asked him to turn Jack Bannister over to the law, had I been asking Fisk to betray
his
nature?

’Twas a thought so shocking my body jerked, and Benton glanced over at me. I turned my gaze to the rooster, peering as if I’d seen something, but in truth I was almost blind.

If Fisk’s nature was to let criminals go free, then I was right to ask him to betray it!

Or was I? I’d long known that loyalty was a thing Fisk valued high, even when he gave it to those who might not deserve it, like the sisters who hadn’t defended him when his brother-in-law drove him out of town. Or even a criminal confederate, who seemingly had betrayed Fisk in every way short of death.

Or a certain knight errant, who always insisted on following the voice of his own heart … but mayhap hadn’t listened to the heart-voice of his squire?

“Rubbish,” I said aloud. “There’s no virtue in let-
ting criminals go free. They’ll keep right on harming others!”