The Accusation Read online

  The Accusation

  Historical Mysteries Collection

  Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  About the Author

  Also by

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  Copyright © 2015 by Gaskell Publishing

  No part of this book may be reproduced,

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  It’s A Wrap

  Chapter One

  It was raining. It always seemed to be raining.

  But the rain would not wash away the blood from her neck and her shoulders. He had seen executions before. Each different, for some were afraid and others proud, arrogant and defiant. Some refused the blindfold, Others accepted the hood. One, a young man who did not deserved his death, was killed with an axe half sharp and wielded by a weak hand. The man's neck, hacked as a child might try to chop wood, He could not scream because his throat was open to the winds, but the battered agony shone through his eyes. Some vomited. His mother had fainted.

  Now he rode through the night, having given his oath and would keep it. He'd promised to stand at the edge of the scaffold and to look into her face, and had sworn to smile as the Countess of Harrington lowered her head to the block. She asked for the last thing she saw to be his smile. And that he help her daughter, lead the girl away from the carnage, and talk to her until she understood.

  Charles was late. There had been footpads. It had been an unfortunate delay.

  He pulled his hood up, wrapped the oiled cape tighter around his shoulders, urged his mare onwards with promises of turnips and dry oats once they arrived, and plodded onwards down the lane, mud squelching like the ooze of blood from his own thigh, dripping now to his boots amongst the slick of rain. Red rain puddling the stirrup.

  The sun was westing behind the rain clouds, and the long twilight slithered from the black silhouettes of the trees. It would be dawn before he arrived, but riding through the night was something he had become accustomed to during the last four years since Mary had taken the throne.

  The footpads had been a complication. Both had died but he had taken a knife point in the thigh and the drain of blood further weakened him. With some sympathy for the two robbers he'd killed, for the poor and the hungry had few resources in these days of dismal harvests, the resulting famine, and the miserable hatred for the people's queen, he had killed them quickly. Yet not quick enough to avoid his own injury.

  Charles smiled at himself and shrugged, dislodging the rain which collected in the brim of his hood.

  Still raining.

  It rained through summer, autumn, winter and spring of all the years of the queen's reign. Crops were ruined, but it had not rained hard enough to put out the fires. The burnings continued. God, it seemed, punished both Protestants through the fires at the stake, and the Catholics too through the failed harvests and the endless sobbing hunger.

  His mother's friend, the Countess of Harrington, was no Catholic and no spy. She had not plotted to put the queen's sister on the throne, and she had not plotted for anything except a peaceful life for herself and her family. Yet distrust and dislike were their own condemnation. They said the queen was pregnant. Charles hoped the child would resemble neither of its parents.

  The stars blinked out in the cloud-free patches behind the rain. No moon salvaged its aura, and the darkness, although star pricked, tumbled into black rime.

  Soaked and tired, Charles lessened speed, but for his mare and not for himself. Softly, he began to sing. In the rain, the words fell shallow and flat. Once he dozed, falling half into dream. Absurdly, it had been a dream of delights and pleasures, but within moments he woke, and ensured that he did not sleep again.

  It was past dawn when he arrived at the Tower. He rode over the drawbridge and beneath the raised portcullis. He was known well enough and would not be stopped. Ellen, Countess of Harington stood before the block. She stared down at the ring of straw laid to catch the blood. The wooden block was stained. She refused the blindfold and stood in simple grey, the white collar removed so that her neck remained naked for the axe. Charles stood directly below and where she could see him. Close enough to ruin his doublet with blood spatter, but it would merge with his own blood and did not concern him.

  Standing very still, for otherwise it showed cowardice and fear, she spoke her last words. The shadows streaked down from battlements to bailey and darkened as they crossed those from the chapel, turning her blue eyes black. The countess had seen Charles. "I declare my innocence of all charges, but I ask the Lord God to bless my sweet queen." Charles smiled. It was what she had wanted. "I also ask," she continued, looking straight at him, "that my daughter be exonerated from all blame in my death, and accept it as a release for us both."

  The girl stood back, clutching her nurse's arm. She looked down and not at her mother. Her face was tear smudged. Charles gazed steadily at the countess, and nodded briefly. She knelt and laid her neck across the block.

  A clean cut.

  He smelled her urine and her blood and moved back. The axeman lifted the head by the hair, and showed it to the small crowd. Crossing immediately to the countess's daughter, Charles murmured, "Do you remember me, Katherine? Then come with me now."

  He took her shoulders, moving her towards him. It surprised him to feel the physical pleasure and the sudden emotional sympathy, for he had never liked her previously. But now her body trembled with wretched sobbing, and her breasts pressed against his arm.

  "My mother told me you'd come. I didn't think you would."

  "I'm taking you to the city manor as she wished."

  Katherine looked up. "I have a choice?"

  "Not really." Charles looked back to the block. The crowd had dispersed, but there had only been ten of them, a handful of officials, a smaller handful of the curious, the servants, Katherine and himself. "Your personal possessions have been taken to the house since your family property now belongs to the crown." He nodded to the nurse, who once again took Katherine's arm. Charles turned back again to the block. The body, a limp rag in blood soaked grey, the neck, a gristle torn and ravaged mess of broken bone and tumbling veins. A woman was on her knees, scrubbing the block as a boy gathered up the soiled straw from the base.

  They could hear a roar of hunger from the menagerie, lions perhaps, seeing the approach of their keeper.

  "You will, I presume," Katherine whispered, "soon "return to your country estate, my lord?"

  He had never liked her either, but he had last seen her at twelve years of age, when he was twenty. Now she was, he supposed, seventeen. Her father long dead, her mother and brother executed, no doubt her childish sulks were now over. His own arrogance, he smiled, should also have faded. The monstrous parcel of bitter destruction in his own family had left him absurdly wealthy but almost entirely alone.

  Saying simply, "I will escort you and your nurse to my home," he untethered his horse and led it by the bridle, back out into the bustle of London's streets.

  It was an old house and had originally belonged to his grandfather, half ruined when he bought it. His grandfathers had been the first execution Ch
arles attended. As a child, this haunted him as he learned the process, the immediate opening of bowels and bladder, the stench of the blood, and the sudden loss, misery and repeated nightmare. This had been in the time of the old king and he had hated every monarch since.

  Within the Cripplegate area, run-down and poverty-stricken, the house sat square in Muggle Street, with windows still of polished bone, and barely a crack of glass in the place. Katherine stared. "I shall learn to love it, no doubt," she murmured, and trudged the short entrance, still holding to her nurse's arm. Charles called the ostler to stable his horse, and the steward to unlock and welcome his patrons. A message had been sent two weeks previously and the place was clean, or as clean as was feasible, the kitchen bustled, a hot fire blazed in the shadowy hall, the chimney coughed smoke, and hopefully the beds were made up and aired.

  He intended staying the night, but would leave the following morning.

  "I promised your mother. This is now your home, Lady Katherine, and I shall rarely come here if at all, unless you need for help for any reason. I am deeply sorry regarding your mother - I loved her too."

  Sniffing, "You didn't know her," Katherine sat, disregarding the dust that bounced up from the tapestried cushion.

  Charles raised one intentionally supercilious eyebrow. "Really, madam? And you know this because -?"

  "Because I haven't seen you at our home since I was eleven or twelve, and my mother never spoke of you."

  "My own mother went to the block a little more than a year ago. Before that your mother visited her often and I was invariably at home to receive her. We talked many long hours after my mother retired to her bed. Lady Ellen was a woman I respected. And in fact, she spoke of you often." Charles bowed slightly, and called for wine and honey cakes. "She asked that I stand close as she died, and smile. She asked that my smile be the last thing she saw. I hope I fulfilled that."

  "Tis marchpane has been prepared, my lord," said the steward.

  "Whatever fills a platter."

  Katherine sat stiff, hands clasped. "I have just watched my mother mutilated and slaughtered, my lord, and am in no mood to munch marchpane and gossip regarding your opinions of my family."

  He remembered the warmth of her body against his, it reminded him of how long it had been since he held any woman, kissed a woman, or made love to a woman. He waited until the steward had poured two cups of Burgundy, and then said, "I also promised your mother I would attempt to console you, to explain some matters, and to leave you comforted." The faint smile ebbed. "I doubt this is the appropriate moment, and instead I shall leave you to the comforts of your nurse, my lady. I shall be back for dinner, but will be gone in the morning."

  Having quickly drained the contents of his cup, he left the hall and closed the door quietly behind him. At once, he heard her crying.

  That night Charles lay in the bed he had not occupied for many years. It felt cold and hard to him. Naked, his hands clasped behind his head, he lay, one knee bent, while gazing up at the tester above him. The golden tassels had begun to unravel and cobwebs decorated the underside of the faded satin.

  He wondered if the girl still cried. He wondered if her warmth in his bed would have stopped his own dry and silent tears. His mind drew his fingers across her breasts, firm across the nipples and then cautious and gentle as his palms reached downwards, discovering all her body.

  He had not slept with a woman for what seemed like many years. Charles remembered the deaths, but not the loving.

  His young cousin's execution had been a butchery and it had been his nightmare for many months, and still sometimes recurred. His elder cousin, just a day before the younger, had strode to the block as though welcoming it as a friend. His mother, the previous year, had prayed hard for courage and had practised through the night before, but as she lowered her head and smelled the rancid shit on the block, she had fainted. She died while still unconscious. Her prayers were therefore answered.

  There was no one left in his family to torture, except his aged aunt and a fourth cousin, once removed. So the next to die would no doubt be himself. He doubted he would care over much. But, perhaps, to lie with a woman first, and remember that life also held pleasures, would be a sweeter memory when passing his boots and a purse to the executioner, watching as he did, the shine on the axe blade and judging as to its sharpness.

  The shutters across the thin bone windows had not been raised, and so it was the sickle moon that Charles watched. Now late winter, the farmers would be ready to sow their crops, hoping beyond all other hopes, that the rain would stop and the sun would shine and their wheat and vegetables would grow, that there would be hay for the animals, and soup for his children.

  Charles closed his eyes, and remembered his cousin's death and the massacre of five blows before his head parted from its shoulders.

  Death, although inevitable, always brought tears. But the Tudor monarchs had decided that greater pain and greater misery should accompany each death, and at their choice.

  Chapter Two

  The rain eased in the night and an orange sun sprang past the clouds.

  Charles was asleep. Katherine had not slept, and was hoping to stay in bed until her nurse informed her that her host, Earl of Chilham, had ridden away. But having already ridden for a day and a night, and having spent the following day watching the brutality of an execution and the loss of a woman he admired, Charles had no intention of rushing from the house. And he clung to sleep. When, finally, he woke, the earl called for a page to help him dress, since he brought neither his valet nor his squire with him, and demanded ale and cheese be brought to his bedchamber.

  "My lord," mumbled the page, holding out one sleeve of the heavy winter doublet, "I understand there has been an - occurrence - in the night. Master Samson wishes a word before you depart, my lord."

  "Of course." Charles nodded. An occurrence in the night would probably amount to a pair of window shutters broken in the wind, or the cook's gout inspiring him to beg a day off. But these would be Katherine's problems from now on.

  Dressed for the long ride home, Charles wandered downstairs and called for the steward. "You wished to see me, Samson? Is it urgent, as I have a very tiring journey ahead?"

  "It distresses me to say, my lord, that this matter is indeed urgent." The man paused, hovered, coughed, and said, "Arising early this morning as accustomed, I sent young Peter down to the stables to ensure your horse was prepared to leave before midday. The lad scurried back with some alarming news, so I went to investigate. Unfortunately, my lord, his report was accurate."

  Charles yawned. "I need no unnecessary details, Samson. The boy's report?"

  "A body, my lord."

  Charles lifted an eyebrow. "Dead or alive, Samson?"

  "Exceedingly dead, my lord."

  Frowning, Charles followed his steward out beyond the small out-houses and across the cobbled courtyard, beyond the stables, and faced the long low barn where hay and grains were stored. The barn doors, closed below on heavy iron hinges, had been swung open above. There, in the doorway, a body hung from the lintel, the hangman's rope around its neck. But above the neck, thick and bloody, no head remained, it had been sliced from its body. Nor did anything else remain to identify it, except for the clear indication that it was male, for the clothes had also been removed.

  Charles stood for some moments, then walked forwards and entered the barn, pushing open the lower doors. "So a young man has been beheaded, and now hangs naked from my barn," the earl said to himself. He turned to the steward who stood nervously outside, eyes averted. "Are any of our staff missing, Samson? Have you checked?"

  "I have, my lord." Samson shook his own head. "No one is missing this morning, and I've discussed the situation with several others, both in the stables and in the kitchens, without result. We have no knowledge of this person, my lord."

  "Murder then. And recent." Charles turned. "I have seen sufficient executions lately to recognise when the cut is new." Leaving th
e barn, Charles held a screw of paper in his hand. "This," he said, "was wedged where you might imagine, although could be noticed only from behind. It is a threat." Unscrewing the twist, he read it again, and nodded to his steward. "Arrange this poor creature's burial, Samson, but call the constable first. Either he or the sheriff of the ward needs to see what has happened."

  "My lord, immediately."

  "And in the meantime, keep the maids and younger boys away. In particular keep the Lady Katherine and her nurse far from the stables. Neither owns a horse as yet. It should not be too hard."

  Striding back to the larger solar, Charles crumpled the paper in his hand, threw himself into the depths of his father's old chair, stretched his boots to the blaze of the fire which filled the hearth. And closed his eyes. It appeared that he would not be riding for home after all. Not that day, nor probably the next. He was unacquainted with the sheriff of the ward and had never met the Constable. In these days of national murder and the reign of a mad and desperately lonely queen, his own title would prove no protection. And there was a wretchedly innocent female wandering somewhere in the house.

  "Damnation," he murmured, leaning forwards to throw the crumpled paper to the fire. And then, changing his mind, leaned back and read it again.

  'Tis the warning you heed will save your miserable neck. But to share is a noble deed and may help when nort else will.'

  Charles did not understand a word of it. He called the executions murder, and the burning for heresy he called vile and murderous slaughter. But this was murder of a different kind.

  She came in crying, seeking the warmest place to bury her shivers. Charles stood at once, and she sighed. Katherine hoped her host had already left, perhaps for ever, and now fumbled for a kerchief. Finding none, she wiped her eyes and her nose on her sleeve, blushed, straightened her skirts, and stared into the flames.