Murder by Misrule: A Francis Bacon Mystery (The Francis Bacon Mystery Series Book 1) by Anna Castle Page B

goodwife would turn down a shilling in exchange for her silence?
    Francis smiled and prepared to take his leave, but she wasn't finished. "Queen's Day, though. T'weren't blood, sir, but there was a mess of sopping clothes left for me that night. Seems a boatload of yon gentlemen went into the Thames after the pageant. Drunk as porpoises, sir, is what I heard."
    "Porpoises," Francis echoed, wondering where she had learned the word. Some ballad, probably. He hadn't heard about a wherry accident, but then he'd avoided all mention of the Queen's Day festivities, having been barred from enjoying them. Could the murderer have engineered that tumble as an excuse to wash away the signs of his crime in the murky waters of the Thames? He'd have to be a crafty opportunist. And worse, a gentleman of Gray's.
    He pressed a halfpenny into her palm and started to walk away. Then he turned back and gave her another one. She really had done a Herculean job of getting all the mustard out of his velvet curtains.
     
    ***
     
    By Sunday he had explored every path that he could follow without his assistants. Except for one.
    He skipped chapel for the first time in seven years, praying that his mother would never come to hear of it. He spent a hair-raising half hour sneaking into every staircase and running up and down on tiptoe, straining his ears to catch the murmur of chanting and sniffing at gaps under doors for the scent of incense.
    He was in constant dread lest someone see him. For several horrible minutes, he'd been forced to crouch in a dark corner on a second-floor landing, trembling, heart in mouth, while Sir Christopher Yelverton lumbered up to his rooms on the first floor.
    What in the name of a merciful God would he say if he were caught? The last thing he needed was for irrational prying and spying to be added to the list of charges against him. And for all the risk to his reputation, he'd learned nothing. It had been a foolish idea. The conspirator, if such existed, was more likely to consort with his co-religionists after supper, when men strolled freely about the Inn visiting one another.
    He needed to discover who could have known about Smythson's intelligence work. He could try some delicate probing among his colleagues during meals, braving the harm to his digestion. At this point, alas, his best hope was that his under-investigators, once Whitt's honor had been restored, would be able to turn something up.

CHAPTER 10
     
    On the topmost floor of a narrow house in the parish of Saint Martin's Le Grand in the City of London, Clara Goossens sat before her window burning ivory to make black paint. A chill breeze lifted the acrid smoke harmlessly above the rooftops. A small brazier supplied enough heat to keep her hands from growing stiff.
    The room was small, just large enough for her sparse possessions. A bed with a straw mattress, two plain chests, the table under the window where she sat. The stool she sat upon. The brazier. Two woolen blankets, a set of linens, and a few household items were all she'd salvaged from her mother's meager estate. She had earned her fine court clothes with her brush. The tools of her trade were her father's legacy: an easel that folded so she could carry it through the streets and the many-drawered writing desk that held her pigments, oils, and brushes.
    That was all she owned and all she needed. She was free: that was the main thing.
    Except for the nightmares.
    She lifted the piece of burnt ivory with a pair of tongs and set it in the mortar to cool. While she waited, she turned again to study the sketch she had made on Queen's Day. Her critical eye approved the vitality of its fluid lines even as she flinched from the horrible event depicted: a murderer in an open robe with velvet welts on the sleeves knelt over his victim, grinning with exultation. The sketch was charcoal, but she could see the colors in her mind's eye: black robe against sandy earth, blood made redder by the pinkish wall