‘A backstairs entrance to the same subject, and a transparent return to my dreary past, my love.’ He grinned at her. ‘Should I be so easily duped? Let us simply say I admire our noble king, and wish him long life.’
‘Oh pooh. The Duke of Gloucester is young and handsome. The king is old and fat.’
‘The king,’ Drew laughed, ‘is not yet forty years of age, and was once considered the most beautiful man in all Christendom. A king’s appetite for all good things has since ruined his figure, it’s true, but he still reigns with asperity. And our sweet Edward may be petulant and stubborn but he’s also a cunning monarch, and a good deal better than the one before him.’
‘Have you met him?’ Tyballis was impressed.
Andrew opened the door, and the shadows rushed in past him. From the darkness outside, he said, ‘Met the king? A few times, to bow, to kneel, to kiss his ring and finally to shuffle out again. There’s no joy in meeting kings unless you covet power, and that’s one thing I don’t want, my love.’
Andrew had gone, closing the door softly behind him. Tyballis shut her eyes, curled down in the snug warmth his body had left behind, and smiled into the shape of his head left on the pillow. She was half-dozing when he came back.
He strode into the room as quietly as he had left it, and although a half-hour had passed, he was still wearing only his bedrobe. He had belted it only loosely, and it swung a little open. Now he sat again on the edge of the mattress, looking down calmly at her. ‘They have gone,’ he said.
Tyballis struggled up. ‘They? Who? What?’
‘Two packets of white powdered arsenic,’ he said very softly. ‘Two small parcels of death. Both were kept in the trunk where I also keep medicines and herbs. The trunk stands in the kitchen, as you know, and is always double locked.’ He paused, as if waiting for her reaction. But shocked and suddenly frightened, she said nothing. So, he asked, ‘Tell me, have you taken them, little one? For any reason? Or taken the keys? Or given the keys to someone else?’
She shook her head a little wildly. ‘Oh Drew, no, none of those things, I swear it. But this is a house of thieves. Has someone picked the lock? And after what I heard – could it be Luke?’
‘The trunk,’ Andrew continued calmly, ‘is secure against tampering. I thought it pilfer-proof. Without the two correct keys, their position known only to you, my dear, and myself, there remains a combination of levers and a fine balance of cogs to unpick. Only an expert would attempt it. I might otherwise have kept the poisons elsewhere, perhaps hidden in this bedchamber. But I had a fancy to keep them far away from the place where I sleep, and where I make love to you.’ He looked intently at her, as if reading her. Then he said, ‘I will question Luke. I will question the others. But first, my sweet, I beg you to tell me the truth, whatever that truth may be. Do you know anything of this, anything at all?’
Tyballis lowered her eyes to her lap. ‘You don’t trust me.’
‘I’ve told you many times,’ he answered her, ‘that I trust no one. But you mean more to me than trust. Which is why I ask, rather than using subterfuge or threat, and why I will believe, I think, whatever you tell me.’
She looked up at him again. ‘I know nothing, absolutely nothing about it, my love. I know where the keys are kept, but I’ve never used them, never looked in the trunk, and never given the keys to anyone else. But you’ve used many of those medicines in past weeks, nursing Elizabeth and then Davey and Ralph. Have you never given the keys to anyone?’
‘No.’ He smiled. ‘I keep my secrets close, and in choosing to hide the keys in my bedchamber while storing the trunk in the pantries, I remain always conscious of security. I have explained to no other person the means of opening that trunk. It holds too many dangers, even before the arsenic was put there. Some spices can kill in large doses, and many herbs are poisonous.’
‘You told me some of them.’ She climbed quickly from the bed, tugging one of the blankets around her. She hurried to the garderobe and within minutes returned, her palm open. ‘Look. The keys are still there where you put them, each in its separate hiding place. No one has stolen them.’
‘Or if they have,’ he said, ‘they have also put them back.’ He turned at once and left the room, barefoot and soundless.
Tyballis scrambled for her clothes. Dressing as a wealthy woman demanded a degree of manipulation she found extremely difficult on her own. At least respectably covered though dishevelled, she ran through the great dark hall and up the stairs. She heard the noise at once.
Andrew Cobham stood in the upper corridor, facing Nat. Nat was held hard back against the corridor wall, his head shoved to the plaster, the old paint flaking at the pressure. Drew’s hands were on Nat’s collar, gripping his shirt. ‘You?’ he demanded. ‘You’re the only one of this miserable crowd capable of breaking that lock. So, tell me now what you did, and why.’
Nat’s head bobbed backwards and forwards and his neck looked pink. ‘Nothing, Mister Cobham. Nothing, I swear. Honest to God.’
‘I’ve found that those who profess their own honesty, rarely practise it,’ Andrew said, loosening his grip a little. ‘I also know your skills, my friend. You’ve a rare talent, which none of your neighbours share. So, it’s you I suspect before them.’
The others were peering around their open doors. Only Ralph came out, and now stood behind his brother. ‘He’s done nothing, Mister Cobham,’ Ralph insisted. ‘I know everything he does, whether he tells me or not. And he’s never broken into anything of yours, sir, nor never tried to. And to steal poisons? Why, it wouldn’t enter his head, sir.’
Andrew stepped back suddenly. Nat slumped. Drew said, ‘Yet the arsenic is gone. And for once I neither suspected nor expected, nor yet understand the motive. Someone has been very clever, Mister Tame, more so than myself. Hardly unknown, but rare enough. And amongst this household, most surprising.’
Nat scratched his head, breathing fast. ‘And you thought of me? Well, that’s a compliment I didn’t expect. Me cleverer than you, Mister Cobham? Not very likely.’
‘The world is not built on the likely, Mister Tame.’ Andrew smiled faintly. ‘But I believe you, and apologise for the rough treatment. Now I shall go up to speak to Mister Parris. I will not be long.’ He nodded to the row of creaking doors and the several heads poking nervously from their shadows. ‘When I return,’ he continued, ‘I want to speak to everyone. Everyone. This matter is far too serious to rest unexplored. I cannot simply excuse due to friendship.’
Felicia, seeing Tyballis scrambling up the stairs, went to her and took her arm. ‘But the women, sir,’ she said. ‘I hope you don’t suspect us. And Jon is sleeping. He has been most unwell, Mister Cobham, with a winter cold and a shocking headache.’
Andrew had moved towards the attic steps, but he turned. ‘I said everyone, madam.’
Felicia nodded. ‘Then I shall wake Jon at once. But he will suffer for it, and the babies will surely catch the infection.’
‘Infections,’ Andrew shrugged, ‘come in many varieties.’
Chapter Forty-Two
Andrew left within the hour and he took Casper with him. He left Tyballis brooding. It was still raining.
He mounted one of the horses previously used to escort Throckmorton on his initial escape from the country, a horse that had come back with Davey’s body across its rump. It was one of the baron’s own horses that Andrew rode to Throckmorton’s house in Bradstrete, dismounted outside the stables and strode into the house. The baron, vivid in scarlet and clearly dressed to travel in the rain, met him mid passage.