'That will never happen. You must know that by now.'
'Mark took me to see the outside of the great palaces, Greenwich and Whitehall, but he would never let me in, even after we became lovers. He said we could only meet in secret. I was content. And then one day I came home from my work at the apothecary's to find Robin Singleton at my widowed uncle's home with a troop of soldiers, shouting at him, trying to make him say his son had spoken of lying with the queen. When I understood what had happened I ran at Singleton and struck him and the soldiers had to haul me off.' She frowned. 'That was when I first knew what anger lay within me. They cast me out, and I do not think John Smeaton told them of my relationship with Mark, or that I was his cousin, or they would have come after me too, to bully me into silence.
'My poor uncle died two days after Mark. I attended the trial, I could see how the jury looked afraid — there was never any doubt about the verdict. I tried to visit Mark in the Tower, but they would not let me see him until a gaoler took pity on me the night before he died. He lay in chains in that awful place, in the rags of his fine clothes.'
'I know. Jerome told me.'
'When Mark was arrested Singleton said if he confessed to sleeping with the queen he would be reprieved by the king's mercy. He told me that when he was first arrested he had a crazy notion that as he had done no wrong the law would protect him!' She gave a harsh laugh. 'England's law is a rack in a cellar! They racked him till his whole world was nothing but a scream. So he confessed, and they gave him two weeks' life as a cripple while he was tried, then they cut his head off. I saw it, I was in the crowd. I promised him my face would be the last thing he saw.' She shook her head. 'There was so much blood. A stream of it shooting through the air. Always there is so much blood.'
'Yes. There is.' I remembered Jerome saying Smeaton had confessed to lying with many women: Alice's picture of him was idealized, but I could not tell her that.
'And then Singleton appeared here,' I said.
'Can you imagine now how I felt that day when I came across the monastery courtyard and saw him arguing with the bursar's assistant? I had heard there was a commissioner come to visit the abbot, but I had not known it would be him—'
'And you decided to kill him?'
'I had dreamed of killing that evil man so many times. I simply knew it was what I must do. There had to be justice.'
'Often in this world there is not.'
Her face became cold and set. 'This time there was.'
'He hadn't recognized you?'
She laughed. 'No. He saw a servant girl carrying a sack, if he noticed me at all. I had been here over a year then, helping Brother Guy. The London apothecary had dismissed me because I was a relative of the Smeatons. I came back to my mother's. She had a lawyer's letter and went to London to fetch my uncle's poor possessions. And then she died — she had a seizure like my uncle — and Copynger evicted me. So I came here.'
'Didn't the townspeople know of your connection to the Smeatons?'
'It was thirty years since my uncle left and my mother's name changed when she married. The name was forgotten, and I was not likely to remind anyone. I said I had been away working in Esher for an apothecary who died.'
'You kept the sword.'
'For sentiment. Of a winter's evening my uncle used to show us some of the moves swordsmen make. I learned a little about balance, steps, angles of force. When I saw Singleton I knew I would use it.'
'By God, madam, you have a fearsome courage.'
'It was easy. I had no keys to the kitchen, but I remembered the story of that old passage.'
'And found it.'
'By looking through all the rooms, yes. Then I wrote an anonymous note to Singleton saying I was an informer, and would meet him in the kitchen in the small hours. I told him I was someone who had a great secret to reveal to him.' She smiled then, a smile that made me shiver.