'To you it must seem so. I am right then, Mark Smeaton was your cousin?'
She looked up at me. Her eyes narrowed, as though she was calculating something. Then she spoke in clear tones of quiet ferocity such as I hope never to hear again from the mouth of a woman.
'More than my cousin. We were lovers.'
'What?'
'His father, my mother's brother, left to seek his fortune in London when he was a boy. My mother never forgave him for leaving the family, but when the man I was to marry died I went to London to claim kin, for all she tried to stop me. There was no work here.'
'And they took you in?'
'John Smeaton and his wife were good people. Good people. They welcomed me into their house and helped me to a position with a London apothecary. That was four years ago, Mark was already a court musician then. Thank God my aunt died from the sweating sickness, at least she was spared what happened.' Tears appeared in her eyes, but she wiped them away and raised her eyes to my face. Again there was something calculating in them, something I could not fathom.
'But you must know all this, Commissioner—' I have never heard such contempt put into a single word — 'or why are you here?'
'I knew nothing for certain till half an hour ago. The sword led me to John Smeaton — no wonder you pleaded with me not to go to London that day by the fish pond — but for a while I could go no further. I was puzzled when the records said John Smeaton left no male relatives, and his estate went to an old woman — your mother?'
'Yes.'
'I have turned over the name of everyone in this house, wondering who could have had the skill and strength to behead a man, and in London I was no further forward. Then I thought, what if John Smeaton had another female relative? All this time I had assumed a man committed the crime, but then I saw there was no reason why a strong young woman could not have done it. And that led me to you,' I concluded sadly. 'The message I have just had confirmed that a young woman visited Mark Smeaton in his cell the night before he died, and the description is of you.' I looked at her and shook my head. 'It was a grievous sin for a woman to do such a thing.'
Again her voice was level, though dripping with bitterness. 'Was it? Was it worse than what he did?' I marvelled at her control, her steeliness.
'I know what was done to Mark Smeaton,' I said. 'Jerome told me some, the rest I learned in London.'
'Jerome? What has he to do with it?'
'Jerome was in the cell next to your cousin the night you visited him. When he came here he must have recognized you. Singleton as well; that was why he called him liar and perjurer. And, of course, when he swore to me he knew of no man here who could have done such a thing, it was a piece of his twisted mockery. He guessed it was you.'
'He said nothing to me.' She shook her head. 'He should have done, so few know what truly happened. The evil of what you people did.'
'I did not know the truth about Mark Smeaton, Alice, nor the queen, when I came here. You are right. It was a wicked, cruel thing.'
Hope appeared in her eyes. 'Then let me go, sir. All the time you have been here you have puzzled me, you are not a brute like Singleton and Cromwell's other men. I have only done justice. Please, let me go.'
I shook my head. 'I can't. What you did was still murder. I have to take you into custody.'
She looked at me pleadingly. 'Sir, if you knew it all. Please listen to me.'
I should have guessed she wanted to keep me there, but I did not interrupt. This was the explanation of Singleton's death I had been seeking for so long.
'Mark Smeaton came to visit his parents as often as he could. He had gone from Cardinal Wolsey's choir to Anne Boleyn's household, become her musician. Poor Mark, he was ashamed of his origins, but he still visited his parents. If his head was turned by the splendour of the court that was no wonder. It seduced him as you would have it seduce Mark Poer.'