Silken Threads (42 page)

“Quite right,” Rolf said, seizing upon her
rather skewed but opportune perspective. “I was as much a victim in
all this as you, my dear. Now, if you’ll excuse
—
”

“‘Tis exactly as I thought
—
which is
why I took the steps I took.”

Rolf hesitated, not sure he wanted the
answer, but unable to resist asking. “What steps?”

She smiled as if at a slow-witted child.
“You didn’t really think a rheum of the head could last six months,
did you?”

Rolf stared at this demented woman in her
dirt-stained shift, this...this
apothecary
who’d prepared
his wife’s tonic every day for six months. He backed up a little
further, into the cool caress of silk; she closed the distance.
“That was no infusion of yarrow,” he said, both appalled and
impressed.

“Oh, it was,” she assured him. “Olive made
it up in four-pinte batches all winter.”

“Then...what...”

She smiled. “Have you ever heard of woman’s
bane?”

“Woman’s...I...I don’t believe
I’ve
—
”

“Most folks call it wolf’s bane, or
sometimes leopard’s bane, but I prefer woman’s bane, because it can
be so handy for solving a woman’s problems.” She laughed; there was
a slightly frantic edge to it. “It comes from the root of a plant
called monkshood. The ancients called it the Queen Mother of
Poisons. Do you want to know why?”

“Nay.” It couldn’t be. It was impossible.
He’d always thought of Elswyth as rather soft and dull-witted, a
woman who would yield to him and then go placidly about her
business until he was ready for her again. Could he have misjudged
her so dramatically?

“A tiny bit of woman’s bane,” Elswyth said,
“a very tiny bit, can help folks to sleep and take away pain. But
just a tiny bit more can make a person sicker than they’ve ever
been, and in the proper dose, ‘twill bring on a swift and rather
unpleasant death. That’s why Olive doesn’t even know I grow it out
back. I don’t keep it in the shop
—
I go out and dig it up
as I need it.”

“As you need it.” Rolf appraised her soiled
shift, the dirt imbedded under her nails and caking her feet. No
doubt she’d dug up a little bit every day for the past six
months.

“At Christmastide,” Elswyth said, “Master
Aldfrith told me your wife had a rheum of the head and needed a
daily dose of yarrow. Every day, before Olive brought the tonic
over, I’d set her to some chore and slip just a wee bit of woman’s
bane into the phial. Olive never knew. Neither did anyone
else.”

“And Ada just got sicker and sicker.”

She laughed again, shrilly. “Don’t you see
how perfect it was? When the time came, I could give her enough to
finish her off, and everyone would think she’d just wasted away.
And with that scheming little bitch dead of natural causes, you’d
be free to marry me.”

“Why are you here telling me all this?” he
asked, thinking it seemed foolish of her to divulge her chicanery
to anyone, even him, and convinced now that Elswyth was no fool.
Mad as a ferret, mayhap, but no fool.

Elswyth’s dark little eyes turned hard and
glassy again. “Six weeks ago, Olive told me there was a man coming
to your house at compline that day to take your wife to
Paris
—
a serjant named Graeham Fox.”

“Ah.”

“
Ah,”
she mocked. “Well, naturally, I
couldn’t have that. How could you marry me if you had a wife living
in Paris? That bitch had to die, not just go away.”

“As it happens,” Rolf said appeasingly,
unnerved by the lunatic glare in her eyes, “he never came back for
her.”

“Only because I saw to it that he
wouldn’t.”

Rolf just stared at the woman. By Corpus, he
had
underestimated her.

“You know, you can find almost anything you
want in West Cheap,” she said. “I made some inquiries and found
three men willing to crack Serjant Fox’s skull open for the fifty
marks he’d be carrying.”

So that’s why that bastard never showed up
that evening. His respect for Elswyth increased tenfold. “Did they
do it? Did they actually kill him?”

Elswyth smiled with her mouth but not her
eyes. “He never came back, did he?”

An incredulous little giggle bubbled out of
Rolf’s chest. “God’s tooth, woman. You’d go to such lengths just to
marry me?”

“It meant everything to me. So you can
imagine my dismay this morning when I found out what you’ve been up
to with my daughter.”

His giggle turned high-pitched, nervous. “I
can’t imagine what you’re talking a
—
”

“I know everything, Rolf, including that
she’s carrying your bastard. I heard it from her own lips.”

Shit.
He shrugged negligently,
contorting his mouth into what he hoped would look like a charming,
boyish grin, although he’d never been very good at those. “What can
I say, my dear? I’m a man, and Olive...”

“She tempted you.”

“Yes. Precisely. She tempted me, and I
couldn’t re
—
”

“I still want you, you know.”

Jesus Christ.
“Ah. Yes.
Marvelous.”

“I need you,” she said. “I need to be with
you always. Forever.”

“Well, unfortunately, there’s still the
little problem of my wife.”

“Your wife isn’t a problem anymore.”

He swallowed hard. “Nay?”

“Nay. I’ve taken care of her, just now.
She’s gotten what she deserved all along.”

“She’s...” The air went out of Rolf’s lungs.
Could it be true? A strange giddiness overtook him. Was he free, at
last, of the sickly, baseborn little wife who’d been such a vexing
cross to bear?

“She’s dead. You’re a widower. You could
remarry whenever you want.” She held the wineskin out to him.
“Come
—
drink with me to our future together.”

He retreated yet further into the comforting
embrace of the silken banners, eyeing the wineskin warily. Claims
of devotion aside, the woman was a raving loon. “How do I know
what’s in there?”

Another hysterical little burst of laughter.
“You think I’d want to poison you? Here.” Holding the wineskin to
her mouth, Elswyth swallowed down a generous portion of its
contents, then handed it to him.

Reassured somewhat, Rolf took a tentative
sip. It was a cheap, overly sweet vintage, but there was nothing
unusual about it, no hint of adulteration. He drank more, eager to
soothe his strained nerves.

“How did you administer the lethal dose
of
—
what is it?
—
woman’s bane?” Rolf asked.

Elswyth cocked her head as if she hadn’t
heard him right. “Lethal dose? No, no, no, I didn’t kill her with
poison.”

Rolf paused in the act of squeezing some
more wine into his mouth. He swallowed slowly. “I don’t understand.
You said you were going to
—
”

“My plan changed,” she said
matter-of-factly. “Had to. The sheriff caught wind of what I was up
to, so I had to come up with something different.”

“Something different.” The
sheriff
was on to her? Apprehension shivered up Rolf’s spine, crawled over
his scalp, chilling him right down to the bone. “What do you mean?”
he asked, swallowing past his strangely thick tongue. “How did you
kill her?”

“By fire.”

Fire.
That smoke. Rolf sniffed the
air, or tried to; his nose and throat and mouth felt numb, dead; he
couldn’t smell anything. The wineskin slipped out of his fingers
and fell to the ground.

“‘Twas an ugly house,” she said in a drunken
voice, swaying slightly on her feet.

“You set fire to my
house
?” Rolf’s
voice was as oddly slurred as hers. He tried to grab the front of
her shift, but she wasn’t where he thought she was, and he ended up
grasping two of the silken hangings and pulling them down. “You
goddamned crazy bitch! Tell me you didn’t burn down my house!
And
—
Christ, all my silk!” He’d be ruined
—
ruined,
just like his father. “Tell, me, damn your eyes!”

She was laughing, damn her,
laughing,
but then the laughter degenerated into a fit of gagging. Elswyth
sank to her knees, clutching her chest, her breath coming in quick
strident gasps.

“What’s wrong with you?” he asked, even as
his own chest tightened and his breath emerged in huffing little
puffs and his vision swam and he knew oh God what was wrong oh God
no, no, no
—

“One of...the reasons,” Elswyth wheezed,
“they call it the...Qu-Queen Mother of Poisons...is because it’s so
h-hard to detect in, in, in
—
” Her body jerked, shuddered,
her lips drawing back in a grotesque grimace, her eyes wild, blood
trickling from her nose.

“
No!”
He was cold, so cold, an icy
river crackling through his veins, his teeth clenched in agony, a
mad shriek filling his ears,
can’t breathe oh God can’t breathe
no no no no
—

Had to get help, had to get out of there. He
took a lurching step and slipped on a puddle of silk, his legs
wobbling out from beneath him, flailing, thrashing, hands clutching
at the shimmering pennants, yanking them down around him.

He landed slowly with a hard dull silent
thud, everything sideways now, silks floating over him, over both
of them in celestial fluttering wings of bloodred, crimson, plum,
pink, ruby...her face with its flat empty eyes right there in front
of his, beckoning him to join her in eternity so they could spend
their future together.

I need to be with you always. Forever.

He really had underestimated her very
badly.

* * *

The silk traders’ market hall was unusually
quiet in an odd, strained way when Undersheriff Nyle Orlege arrived
shortly after his midday meal to question Rolf le Fever.

He strode through the front entrance of the
massive stone enclo¬sure to find dozens of men in fine silken
tunics clustered around one of the booths, conferring in hushed
tones
—
except for one black-haired fellow jabbering away
anxiously in what sounded like one of the Italian dialects.

“Does anyone know where I can find Rolf le
Fever?” Nyle demanded in his most booming, don’t-ignore-me
voice.

Heads turned, surveying him with interest,
especially the manacles and chains dangling from his belt. Looks
were exchanged; slowly the crowd parted, carving a path into the
booth around which they were gathered.

The first thing Nyle noticed as he walked
toward the booth was that some of the sheets of red and purple silk
hanging there had been torn down and lay strewn about haphazardly.
He’d just about decided some drunken youths had gotten in here
during the dinner hour and vandalized the place when he caught a
whiff of death
—
all too familiar in his profession,
especially in high summer, when bodies ripened within minutes.

And then he saw the legs emerging from
beneath the careless heaps of silk, two sets of them, a man’s in
yellow silk chausses and bejeweled boots and a woman’s, bare and
filthy.

“Bloody hell,” Nyle said.

* * *

“How does your leg feel?” Joanna asked
Graeham as she unlocked her front door.

His splints had come off this morning. It
was late in the afternoon now, and they’d had a full day, much of
it on their feet. First had come Thomas’s funeral at St. Giles, the
lazar-house where he had finally succumbed to his terrible burns
after six long days
—
though he’d been sedated with sleeping
draughts most of that time, and died peacefully. Then, this
afternoon, Olive and Damian Oxwyke had been quietly joined in
matrimony at the door of St. Mary Magdalene on Milk Street, and
Joanna and Graeham had been there to watch.

“‘Tisn’t bad at all,” Graeham said,
following her into the salle. Unencumbered by the splints, his
natural gait was graceful in a powerful, long-legged way, but it
had grown a little stiff as the day had worn on.

Joanna smiled as she hung up her mantle and
unpinned the veil she’d worn over her braids. “You don’t need me to
rub it, then?” When Master Aldfrith had removed the splints, he’d
recommended a nice firm massage to ease any discomfort in the leg,
and had sold him a liniment for that purpose. Catching her eye,
Graeham had smiled and said that seemed like a splendid idea.

“Cheeky little vixen.” Graeham came up
behind her and cupped her breasts through her violet kirtle,
caressing them until she felt breathless. Nuzzling her hair, he
said, “I’m aching to be rubbed.”

“No, really, if you don’t want me to...”

With a growl of mock exasperation, he swept
her up, causing her slippers to fall off, and carried her into the
storeroom, where the liniment was. It was cool and shadowy in here,
the windows having been shuttered all day.

Setting her on her feet, he unbuckled his
belt and pulled off his tunic. He sat on the edge of the
cot
—
where he no longer slept, having shared her bed in the
solar for the past week and a half
—
and tugged off his
boots and chausses, leaving himself in his shirt and drawers.

“I was surprised to see Lionel Oxwyke
embrace Olive after the nuptials,” Graeham said, stretching out
full length on the cot. “Especially given what it cost him to
terminate Damian’s betrothal to that young girl.”

Elswyth’s letter to her daughter, in which
she confessed to every detail of her mad scheme to join herself for
eternity with Rolf le Fever, had nevertheless made no mention of
Olive’s liaison with the guildmaster, or her pregnancy. Damian, who
knew about the illicit relationship
—
it was the secret
Olive had been so distressed to have him
unearth
—
proclaimed to the world in general and his father
in particular that he had sired Olive’s unborn child and meant to
make her his wife posthaste. Lionel Oxwyke was, of course, livid
about the situation, but custom and the Church were on the young
couple’s side; for a woman to quicken with child outside of wedlock
was no grievous sin
—
provided the man did the right thing
and married her.