A Twisted Vengeance

A workshop and several tumbledown sheds lay between the Martha House and John Paris’s narrow, L-shaped dwelling. At one time all the property on this eastern side of Hertergate had been owned by one wealthy merchant, and Kate guessed that what was now the Martha House had been the primary residence. It had a more gracious façade than the house she approached, despite its added wing. Perhaps it was the lack of trees and the dark patches of damp and mold creeping up the plaster façade. So near the river, such a house required constant care, and this one did not receive it.

An olive-skinned manservant with dark eyes and a suspicious frown opened the door, courteously but pointedly asking her to state her name and her business. Kate had met him a few times but could not recall his name. And he clearly did not remember her.

A frail voice from somewhere behind him saved Kate. “Alonso, step aside so that I might see my visitor.”

Alonso obliged, revealing the speaker to be Dame Beatrice, Mistress Paris, though so changed since the last time they met that Kate would not have recognized her had they passed on the street. Seated in a wheeled chair fashioned from parts of a garden cart, Beatrice reached out to take Kate’s right hand in both of hers. Despite the house retaining the warmth of the day, the woman’s hands were icy. And no wonder, her skin was stretched taut on her skeleton. A wasting sickness?

“May God bless you, Dame Katherine, it is a joy to see you so well. And your grand dogs. Lille and Ghent, if I am not mistaken. My memory is not what it was since my illness.”

“I did not know you were ill,” said Kate. “Perhaps one of the beguines next door–”

Beatrice gave what seemed an annoyed shake of her head. “I am well cared for by my husband and Alonso.” She reached back to pat the hand of the manservant now standing behind her chair, ready to wheel it at her order. “You must forgive him for his caution.”

“Of course. And I will not tire you. I came to speak with your husband.”

“John? Ah.” Beatrice’s face registered disappointment.

“Do you ever venture out? Might Alonso bring you round to my house for dinner one day soon?”

A sad, slow shake of the head. “Alas, no, I have not stepped out into the light in a long while. I am told that you now have a niece living with you, as well as your mother just across the hedge in Agnes Dell’s home.”

“My niece, Petra, yes,” said Kate.

Beatrice’s eyes shone with tears – of delight or regret or illness, Kate could not guess. “Perhaps your niece might visit me some time. I should like that.”

“We shall! And the beguines–”

Another, more pointed shaking of her head. “I will not have them on my property. I let Isabella Frost know that I disapprove of her hiring one of them as a tutor for her daughter. Fallen women. I will not have them here.”

“Fallen women? I assure you–”

“Magistra Matilda tells me beguines invite such women into their houses, indeed welcome the return of those among them who have fallen from grace.”

Kate was surprised Beatrice would listen to such gossip, but more surprised by the source – not Isabella but the sister. “Magistra Matilda welcomed the sisters into her house and knows they are virtuous women. I pray you misunderstood her.” Was this Beatrice’s bitterness regarding her husband’s relationship with her neighbor? Or the illness? It did not matter. The woman was pinched and angry. “I will warn them not to stray near your home, Dame Beatrice.”

“Alonso, show Dame Katherine to the master’s parlor.” Beatrice reached down to touch Lille, who was nearest, but, sensing the woman’s mood, the hound backed out of her reach.

Alonso came round from the chair and led Kate and the dogs through the hall into the narrow wing of the house, pausing in front of a carved screen that acted as a partial wall. “Master John, Dame Katherine Clifford is here to see you. And her grand hounds.”

A soft mutter, as if repeating Kate’s name and puzzling over it, and then the sound of a chair being moved, footsteps. John Paris appeared, in tidy dress, if slightly worn at the elbows. Work clothes, Kate guessed.

“Dame Katherine. I pray nothing is amiss?”

“Faith, it is, John.”

He thanked Alonso and sent him back to his mistress, inviting Kate to take a seat in his parlor, a comfortable room with a small brazier for winter, windows high in the south and north walls allowing the strengthening breeze to stir the air in the room and cool it. He kept his distance from Lille and Ghent. He was uneasy near all animals, including horses. It was said he had never learned to ride. A story behind that, no doubt. Perhaps a fall as a child. Or a nip. She motioned for Lille and Ghent to sit at her feet and proceeded to tell her tale, keeping it simple: an intruder, no doubt a thief, in the kitchen of her mother’s new home, a frightened beguine, and, one morning later, a servant found in Thomas Holme’s garden, beaten to death.

“God help us,” John whispered, crossing himself. “Do you believe the thief returned, with deadly intent?”

She realized it might sound so, that in simplifying the tale she had not specified where her mother’s servant now resided. But she did not take the time to correct it. “I come in the hope you might assist me with some information about someone you once employed who appears to be involved. A man named Robin. Agnes Dell says that you fired him for thieving?”

“Agnes? Oh, yes, she knew of the incident, of course.” He looked uneasy, averting his eyes. Because of his liaison with Agnes, or something else? “Greedy cur, that Robin. He and his friends as well. I caught three of them in the warehouse one night, filling sacks with spices and animal hides.”

Kate watched John closely as he spoke, observing how he repeatedly moved his left shoulder up and back as if to loosen a knot in his back, how his foot would start tapping, he’d realize what he was doing, stop it, begin again. He said he had noticed items missing from the inventory within a fortnight of Robin’s switch from day laborer to night watchman, so he had set a trap, a second watchman who would already be in the warehouse, laying low to spy on Robin when he arrived. Unfortunately, the man John chose turned out to be one of Robin’s comrades in crime. Or Robin had convinced him to join him. Either way, wares continued to disappear, so John took it upon himself to make surprise visits.

“Took four such to catch the louts. And a third they’d invited so they might carry more. I let them all go and set my own private guard round the warehouse.”

Kate expressed confusion at John Paris’s failure to call the sheriffs, who would have their sergeants take the men away and hold them for the next court session.

He gazed at the floor while he explained, “The quarter sessions were months away, their crime not so grave as to condemn them to the castle dungeon for so long. And hanging – for that would be their fate. I could not do that, even to them.”

“Did you ask who had hired them?”

“Hired them? I don’t understand. They are thieves.”