The Heresy of Dr Dee

XLI

Personal Dressmaker





‘OH, THAT WAS a mistake,’ Forest said. ‘And coming up here was an even worse one.’

He went to the window, pushed open the shutters to look down into the moonwashed mews.

No one there, not even the ostler.

‘We can get out this way, if needs be. Not much of a drop. Grab hold of the ivy, you’ll be—’

‘They’re merchants and dealers,’ I said, ‘not men of violence.’

Forest swung round to face me.

‘Such men live only for money. And you’ve threatened their life’s income, Dr Dee. Not to say their freedom. Even their necks. You’re alone in a strange town in the midst of nowhere. If you fail to arrive back in London… well, anything could’ve happened along the road. That’s what they’ll say when nobody even finds your body.’

He went to make sure the door of the bedchamber was bolted. I recalled the parting words of John Scory.

… worth remembering that Presteigne still has its share of dark alleys.

Was all this well known? Or only to a circumspect and pragmatic bishop.

Forest slumped back on to the truckle bed, rubbing his eyes. Cold in here, but he was sweating.

‘Did I understand that aright? It’s your opinion that the fat innkeeper is the former Abbot of Wigmore?’

‘He didn’t deny it, did he?’

‘God’s blood.’ Forest was shaking his head. ‘How’s he got away with it for so long? It’s not as if he’s invisible.’

‘No better place to hide than in full view. And if a man’s added immeasurably to the prosperity of a town and all who live there, a wall of silence will be erected about him.’

‘A whoremaster, too?’

‘Well qualified,’ I said, recalling Bonner in the Marshalsea.

Poking maids and goodwives over quite a wide area.

‘If even half of what you came out with down there is true,’ Forest said, ‘it’s clear you can’t lie here tonight. Nor anywhere in this town. You have to get out, and soon. And I mean soon. Might be the best thing if you were to ride back with me to Hereford, after—’

‘What about Dudley?’

‘—after we make full sure that Lord Dudley is not here.’ Forest wiped sweat from his brow with a sleeve. ‘Jesu, how can he be away from here without a horse? This looks not good, Dr Dee. Is he robbed? Is he beaten? Is he…? What can we do? You know this shithole better than me. Where’ve we failed to search?’

‘I think, for a start, we might open his letter.’

‘No. Never. I’m entrusted to bring it to him.’

‘I say this not lightly. What if it offers some possible reason for his disappearance? Or suggests something we might do… somewhere we might look?’

‘I’ve never opened my lord’s correspondence.’

‘Then I’ll open it,’ I said.

I took a candle on a tray, went out and fired it from the sconce on the landing, glancing down the oaken stairs to the lower hall, where another single sconce lit an oak pillar.

All was quiet down there.

Too quiet, maybe.



It made little sense at first.

There was a letter within a letter, the outer and shorter of which was to Dudley from his steward, evidently written in haste and signed TB.

May it please your lordship, I enclose correspondence recently discovered by Sir Anthony Forster between the pages of a book in his library but not disclosed to the coroner whose inquiries were deemed to be completed.

I broke the inner seal and uncovered a bill of work from Lady Dudley’s London dressmaker, William Edney, for the alteration of two gowns.

Well, I knew of this from Dudley. One of the best indications that Amy had been in relatively good heart within days of her death was her continuing interest in fashionable apparel. The only other possible explanation was that she’d wanted her corpse to be found well and elegantly clad.

Attached to the bill was a note from Edney on which some lines had been underscored in thick ink strokes, presumably by Blount.

My lady’s personal dressmaker will attend upon her, as arranged, on the first Friday of next month, September 6.

It was dated August 27.

This, to me, was new. There had been no suggestion of Amy receiving any visitors on that last weekend.

There was another short note to Dudley from Blount which I read twice before passing the bill to Forest, who stared at it for some moments as if it might break into flames. I opened my hands, helpless.

‘I think you should read it. All of it.’ Pushing the candle towards him. ‘Did Lord Dudley have any idea that his wife was to be visited by a dressmaker two days before she died?’

‘Not to my knowledge. Can that be true?’

I passed him the small paper attached to the bill.

My Lord, Edney tells me that the personal dressmaker was unable to visit Lady Dudley, being ill with a fever during the week of the appointment. You will know of my Lady’s fondness for the Spanish styles and it seems the personal dressmaker was a well qualified Spaniard who had been in Edney’s employ these past five months and made other apparel for Lady Dudley but has since returned to Spain. I was therefore not able to establish the severity of his fever, if fever there was, during the first week of September.

Forest, looked up, squeezing his dark-bearded jaw. ‘What does it mean?’

‘Dressmaking is… a regrettable gap in my knowledge. What think you of Blount’s final sentence? “If fever there was”. It seems Blount may have had cause to think that the dressmaker might have lied about his fever to cover the fact that he made that journey to Cumnor after all. Perchance arriving…’ I broke off to read the note yet again, to be quite certain ‘…two days later than arranged.’

Forest thought on it longer than was necessary.

‘No one would know, if that were the case,’ he said at last. ‘The entire household having gone to the local fair.’

‘The entire household having been virtually dispatched to the fair. By Lady Dudley.’

Closing my eyes upon a hollow expulsion of breath. It was all too clear that Amy had gone to some considerable effort to make sure that she’d be alone in the house that day.

For the visit of a Spanish dressmaker? For the purpose of him measuring her for a gown?

‘Listen, I—’ Forest was coughing from a parched throat. ‘I can’t… can’t discuss this any further. We should never have opened it.’

‘Was Edney deceived by the Spaniard? We must needs consider the possibility of the Spaniard acting independently of Edney, having feigned a sickness to cover his movements.’

But maybe not independently of his country, its king… or his ambassador, la Quadra. And others I could think of who were not Spanish. The implications were like to a blade in the gut, and each name that arose in my mind was another savage twist.

Forest’s face was yet a mask of bewilderment as I gave voice to the unspeakable.

‘Why would Amy have gone to so much effort to make sure she was alone in the house for the visit of a Spanish dressmaker? Because, as Blount’s letter says, she knew him. He’d made gowns for her before. She was fond of the Spanish styles. So… how well did she know him?’

‘Stop!’ Forest cried out. ‘For Christ’s sake, Dr Dee, go no further with this madness until we find Lord Dudley. There’s true darkness here. Darkness on every side.’

‘Well enough to wish to be alone with him?’

‘We must needs leave this place. Without delay. Those bastards downstairs, they’d rather burn it down with us inside—’

‘A woman alone in someone else’s house?’ I couldn’t stop now. ‘A woman who’d not seen her husband for a year, only heard the persistent rumour about him siring the Queen’s child?’

‘I pray you, Dr Dee, get out of here.’

Even as Forest snatched up the letter and the bill, bundled them together and thrust the packet inside his doublet, a knock came on the door of the bedchamber.

One knock. Truly, no more than a tap but in our present mood it had the impact of a mace. A hiss issued from Forest.

‘Don’t open it.’

I said, ‘Who’s that?’

My heart leaping at the thought that it might be Dudley.

But there was no reply, only the padding of soft footsteps, I thought receding down the stairs, but could not be sure. I waited until I could hear nothing outside then brought the candle to the door. As I drew back the bolt, Forest pulled his side-sword, whispering.

‘Open it no more than an inch. Keep your hand out of the opening. Stand hard against the door.’

So I might slam it in a face?

But there was no face.

I peered through the widening gap. The only movement was the flame from the sconce on the landing slanting in the draught from the opened door. I went out, lifting the candle into the corners. No one there, no one on the stairs.

‘Nobody,’ I said.

Stumbling, then, as my left foot prodded something on the floorboards, sending it skittering.

I crouched with the candle: a sackcloth bundle, no more than a few inches wide. Unexpectedly heavy. I brought it back into the chamber and closed and rebolted the door.

Placed the bundle on the board under the window in full moonlight.

‘Careful.’ Forest laid his sword on the truckle, pulled on his leather gloves. ‘Let me do this.’

‘You think something might spring out at us?’

‘And you think it’s a bar of gold as a bribe, do you?’

I supposed that any man who’d been with the Dudley family as long as Forest would, in any situation, fear a blade from out of darkness. He pulled at the sackcloth, which came easily away, revealing another cloth underneath. Black.

‘Holy God,’ I said.

Gently lifting away the corners of soft black cloth.

What lay beneath welcomed the moon.

Forest stepped away.

‘What is it?’

Despite the circumstances of its arrival, I was stricken with awe.

‘This,’ I said, ‘would seem to be… what we came here for.’