‘Your husband did not mind you having friends who were …?’ I left the sentence hanging.
‘French?’
‘I was going to say, men.’
Sophia’s teasing smile turned to scorn.
‘Well, of course he would, if he’d known. He didn’t even like me to leave the house, but fortunately he was out so often at his business that I sometimes had a chance to slip away on the pretext of some chores. Olivier was the son of French weavers – his family came as refugees to Canterbury twelve years ago, after the massacre of Saint Bartholomew’s Day.’
I shivered, despite the stuffy air; the mention of that terrible event in 1572, when the forces of the French Catholic League rampaged through the streets of Paris, slaughtering Protestant Huguenot families by the thousand until the gutters ran scarlet with their blood, never failed to chill me to the bones. The memory of it was kept fresh in England, as a warning of what could be expected here if a Catholic force were ever to invade.
‘I had heard that many Huguenots came to England to escape the religious persecution,’ I said.
‘Canterbury is one of their largest communities. They are really the best of people,’ she added warmly, and instantly I disliked this Olivier all the more.
‘But tell me how your husband died, then,’ I said, wanting to change the subject.
Sophia passed a hand across her face and held it for a moment over her mouth, as if gathering up the strength for this part of the story. Eventually she laid her hands flat on the table and looked me directly in the eye.
‘For six months, I endured this marriage, if that is what you want to call it. I was known as Kate Kingsley, and my official history was that my father, a distant cousin of Sir Edward’s, had recently died, leaving me an orphan with a useful parcel of land in Rutland. I suppose he thought that was far enough away that no one would be likely to check. When I appeared with him in public, I was demure and well turned-out, which was all anyone seemed to expect of me. And at home, I was regularly beaten and forced to endure what he called my wifely duty, which he liked to perform with violence, though he was always careful never to leave marks on my skin where it might show.’ She flexed her hands, trying to keep her expression under control.
‘How did you bear it?’
She shrugged.
‘It is surprising how much you can bear, when you are obliged to – as you must know, Bruno. My greatest fear was that I would get another child, he forced himself on me so often, and I knew I could never love any child of his. With every month that passed, I worried my luck would not hold. Lately I had started to think about running away. Olivier was going to help me.’
I’m sure he was, I thought, uncharitably.
‘Did your husband suspect?’
‘I don’t think so. He was always preoccupied with his own business. In fact, from the first days in that house, I’d begun to notice odd things about my husband’s behaviour.’
‘Aside from his violent streak, you mean?’
‘Odder than that, even. He was often out of the house at strange hours, leaving in the dead of night and returning towards dawn. Once I asked him where he’d been when he got into bed with the cold air of night still on him, and he fetched me such a slap to my jaw that I feared I would lose a tooth.’ She rubbed the side of her face now at the memory of it. ‘After that, I always pretended to be asleep when he came in.’
‘So he was a man with secrets. Women, do you suppose?’
She shot me a scornful look.
‘When he had a whore ready at his disposal in the comfort of his own home, at no extra charge?’ She shook her head. ‘I told you, my husband didn’t like to part with money if it could be avoided. No, there was something else he was up to, but I never found out what. Underneath the house there was a cellar that he always kept locked, with the key on a chain at his belt. And sometimes his friends would come to the house late at night.’ Her face darkened. ‘By his friends, I mean some of the most eminent men of the city. My husband was a lay canon at the cathedral, as well as being magistrate, so he was a person of influence. They would shut themselves in his study and talk for hours. Once I tried to listen at the door, and it seemed they were arguing among themselves, but I could not stay long enough to hear anything useful – the old housekeeper found me there in the passageway and shooed me off to bed. She said Sir Edward would kill me if he caught me there, truly kill me, and she had such fear in her face that I believed it was a serious warning, honestly meant.’ She paused to take another bite of bread. ‘But two weeks ago he had been up to the cathedral, to a meeting of the Chapter, as he often did, and afterwards he was to take his supper with the Dean. He never came home.’
‘What happened?’
‘One of the canons appeared at my door, about nine o’clock at night, with two constables. He had found Edward’s body in the cathedral precincts. He must have been on his way home when he was attacked.’
‘How did he die?’
‘Struck down with a heavy weapon from behind, they said, and beaten repeatedly while he lay there until his skull smashed. They said his hands were all broken and bloodied, as if he’d been trying to cover his face.’ She pressed her lips together. ‘I wasn’t sorry – the man was a brute. But it must have been a dreadful way to die. His brains were all spilled over the flagstones, they told me.’
‘His brains …’ The detail sounded familiar, as if I had heard the description before, but I could not place it. ‘You did not have to see it, I hope?’
‘No, they took the body away. It was a vicious act. The killer must have been someone who violently hated him.’
‘Were there people who hated him that much?’
‘Apart from his wife, you mean?’ She gave me a wry glance.
I acknowledged the truth of this with a dip of my head. ‘But you said no one knew how he treated you in private. So how did they come to suspect you?’
She poked at a piece of bread and leaned in.
‘I had the wit to realise when the canon came that if I didn’t give him a good show of shock and grief he would find that curious, to say the least. He handed me the sword that my husband had been wearing, still sheathed, and his gold signet ring, all daubed in blood. I played the distraught widow, thinking that would make them go away.’
‘I find it hard to imagine you in that role,’ I said, with a fond smile. She almost returned it.
‘Oh, you would be surprised, Bruno, how convincing I can be. He said the body had been taken to the coroner and asked if I wanted someone to sit with me that night, to save me being alone. I thanked him and said I had old Meg, the housekeeper, for company – that was stupid of me, because it was Meg’s day off and she had gone to visit a friend, but I just wanted him to go so I could stop pretending to cry and enjoy an untroubled night’s sleep. I could hardly explain to him that I wanted more than anything to be left on my own, for once.’
‘Did he know you were lying?’
‘Not at the time. He went away, and perhaps an hour later my husband’s son, Nicholas, came home, with the smell of the alehouse on him. The constables had found him in there with his friends and given him the news. He was cursing and shouting at me in his drunken rage that it was all my doing. He said nothing had gone right in that house since the day his father brought me into it.’ She paused, and I saw the anger flash across her face before she mastered it. ‘Then – well, I’ll spare you the details. Suffice to say, he thought he could take his father’s place in the marriage bed.’
‘Holy Mother!’ I drew a hand across my mouth and felt my other fist bunch under the table.
‘Don’t worry, I fought him off.’ She gave a brief, bitter laugh. ‘I was damned